The Amateur Message Boards of the World Famous VoyeurWeb

Reuters.com

A mountain of peanuts is piling up in the South, threatening to hand American taxpayers a nearly $2 billion bailout bill over the next three years and leaving the government with a big chunk of the crop on its books.
Peanut growers in states including Georgia and Alabama boosted sowing acreage by a fifth this spring and now are wrapping up harvesting their 3.1 million-ton crop, the second-largest ever, even as prices plumb seven-year lows.

Further down the article is this gem:

First, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is paying farmers most of the difference between the "reference price" of $535 per ton (26.75 cents per lb) and market prices, now below $400 per ton. A Nov. 18 report to Congress estimates such payments this year for peanuts exceed those for corn and soybeans by more than $100 per acre.

And this:

Secondly, government loan guarantees mean once prices fall below levels used to value their crops as collateral, farmers have an incentive to default on the loans and hand over the peanuts to the USDA rather than sell them to make the payments.

More Keynesian attempts by the Dept of Agric to manipulate a market.

Will the usual lack of success.

Never known a farmer to say he's making a good living. :lol: