Will subsidies to farmer Perry come back to haunt presidential hopeful Perry?

When Gov. Rick Perry was the state's agriculture commissioner, the federal government paid farmer Rick Perry not to farm his 40 acres in Haskell County.

The $9,624 that Perry was paid under the Conservation Reserve Program to leave his land fallow between 1991 and 1998 is tiny in comparison with the $15 billion the federal government pays every year in federal farm subsidies. In fact, it doesn't even put Perry near the top of the subsidy stack for farmers in his family ZIP code.

But for Perry, a fiscal conservative who has called on the federal government to "stop spending all the money," the issue of farm subsidies could be delicate if he enters the presidential race, especially in the Iowa caucuses.

At least one of the GOP presidential candidates, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, already has come under fire for her personal ties to farm subsidies.

Bachmann voted against the 2008 farm bill, saying it was loaded with "outrageous pork and subsidies for agricultural business and ethanol growers." A year later, she praised the U.S. Department of Agriculture for propping up pork and dairy commodities, according to a Los Angeles Times story published as she entered the presidential race in June.

The Times reported that Bachmann's father-in-law's farm, from which she and her husband receive income, received $260,000 in dairy subsidies between 1995 and 2008.

"That wasn't about farm subsidies; that was about the hypocrisy factor," said Drake University political scientist Dennis Goldford.

The 1990s payments weren't the only ones Perry or his family has gotten from federal farm programs.

His tax returns from when he was in the Legislature show he received $72,687 in agricultural program payments between 1987 and 1989, when he was farming his land. His father, J.R., received a total of $6,443 in cotton and wheat subsidies in 2002 and 2003.

As for his 40-acre farm, Perry sold it in 1998. Perry claimed a $17,693 loss on his federal income taxes for that year.

To put the Perrys' subsidies in perspective, there were 21 farms in their ZIP code that received more than $1 million in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2010, according to a database maintained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy organization that says farm subsidies harm the environment and are a form of corporate welfare.

While campaigning for passage of the 1995 farm bill, Perry urged the nation to move away from direct subsidies for farmers. He said they should be given incentives, such as reduced capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes.

"In the 1995 farm bill, we must carefully but thoughtfully move our farmers and ranchers away from a subsidized system to a market-driven system," Perry said in a speech delivered in Iowa . "We must move away from government assistance to opportunity enhancement."

Former U.S. Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Stamford, was a leading Texas lawmaker on the agricultural policy front in the 1990s. Stenholm said Perry's position was very much in line with what the Republican Party wanted at the time. Stenholm said Republicans eliminated most subsidies because prices were high but then reinstated many of them when prices fell several years later.

One subsidy that Perry backed in 1995 but now opposes is federal support for using grain such as corn in the production of ethanol.

As agriculture commissioner in 1993, Perry praised the federal Environmental Protection Agency for requiring ethanol in reformulated gasoline. Perry said it enhanced the chances of an ethanol plant being built in corn-growing regions of Texas.

"Ethanol also has the potential to raise the price corn farmers receive by 16 to 20 cents a bushel," Perry said in a Dec. 15, 1993, news release. "I am excited about its potential for the Texas economy, and I strongly support its increased use and production in the Lone Star State."

As governor, Perry started coming out strongly against grain-based ethanol in 2007, saying it was driving up the prices of feed corn given to livestock and poultry. At the behest of poultry producer Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim, Perry unsuccessfully sought an EPA waiver from fuel standards, a waiver that, if it had been granted, would have effectively undermined the grain ethanol industry.

"We don't want to be put in the place of having to decide whether we are going to feed cattle or fuel vehicles," Perry said in 2007. He favored instead the conversion of biomass from city wastes or timbering into ethanol.