Reason.com
California rasin farmers have been giving almost HALF of their crop (47%) to the US Department of Agriculture for FREE.
It’s part of depression-era regulations, called an agriculture marketing order, meant to stabilize crop prices so that raisin farmers receive a fair price every year. An elected board of bureaucrats known as the Raisin Administrative Committee decides what the proper yield should be in any given year in order to meet a previously decided-upon price. Once they can estimate the size of the year's harvest, they force every farmer to surrender a percentage of their crop to raisin packers like Sun-Maid. The packers then place the raisins in a “reserve pool,” a special holding vat for raisins that cannot be sold in the U.S. Eventually, the packers can sell the reserve pool raisins overseas at highly discounted prices set by the government or funnel them into school lunch programs for next to nothing.
The farmers were always supposed to get a percentage of the money raised from the reserve pool raisins, but as profit margins dwindled over the years, so did the return to farmers. The tipping point came in 2003, when farmers received zero dollars in return for the 47 percent of the crop they had surrendered.
The Hornes started packing and selling their own raisins, which they believed would allow them to circumvent the marketing order. In doing so, they inadvertantly sparked a small revolution, as other independent raisin farmers saw their initial success and began to pack and sell, too. The government wasn't happy (neither was Sun-Maid).
When the Hornes and a few other raisin farmers challenged the USDA's seizure of their crop without payment as an unconstitutional taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment, the government balked and said that the issue should be heard in a Federal Claims court, as the case had nothing to do with the taking of property but instead was a matter of the Hornes violating farming regulations and being fined for doing so.
The Fifth Amendment says that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the USDA and declared that they had no jurisdiction in the case. Luckily for the Hornes, however, the Supreme Court took the case and ruled, in a 9-0 decision, that the 9th Circuit was mistaken and must consider the case on its constitutional merits.
“They want us to pay for our own raisins that we grew. We have to buy them back!” ~Raisin Valley Farms owner Marvin Horne
California rasin farmers have been giving almost HALF of their crop (47%) to the US Department of Agriculture for FREE.
It’s part of depression-era regulations, called an agriculture marketing order, meant to stabilize crop prices so that raisin farmers receive a fair price every year. An elected board of bureaucrats known as the Raisin Administrative Committee decides what the proper yield should be in any given year in order to meet a previously decided-upon price. Once they can estimate the size of the year's harvest, they force every farmer to surrender a percentage of their crop to raisin packers like Sun-Maid. The packers then place the raisins in a “reserve pool,” a special holding vat for raisins that cannot be sold in the U.S. Eventually, the packers can sell the reserve pool raisins overseas at highly discounted prices set by the government or funnel them into school lunch programs for next to nothing.
The farmers were always supposed to get a percentage of the money raised from the reserve pool raisins, but as profit margins dwindled over the years, so did the return to farmers. The tipping point came in 2003, when farmers received zero dollars in return for the 47 percent of the crop they had surrendered.
The Hornes started packing and selling their own raisins, which they believed would allow them to circumvent the marketing order. In doing so, they inadvertantly sparked a small revolution, as other independent raisin farmers saw their initial success and began to pack and sell, too. The government wasn't happy (neither was Sun-Maid).
When the Hornes and a few other raisin farmers challenged the USDA's seizure of their crop without payment as an unconstitutional taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment, the government balked and said that the issue should be heard in a Federal Claims court, as the case had nothing to do with the taking of property but instead was a matter of the Hornes violating farming regulations and being fined for doing so.
The Fifth Amendment says that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the USDA and declared that they had no jurisdiction in the case. Luckily for the Hornes, however, the Supreme Court took the case and ruled, in a 9-0 decision, that the 9th Circuit was mistaken and must consider the case on its constitutional merits.
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