A farmer's horror story

Farmer: What do you mean, we are not a farm?

United States Department of Agriculture representative: The county tax board took away your greenbelt exemption, which means you're not a farm. So we can't lend you the money to farm.

Farmer: We have 200 acres prepped and ready to replant.

USDA: Yes, but nothing is planted.

Farmer: That's because the USDA - your agency - burned us out.

USDA: We can't give you a loan. You see, the tax board says you are not a farm because nothing is growing on your farm, so there will be no loan to replant your farm.

Farmer: But it was the USDA that burned out the farm to begin with.

USDA: Yes, but that's not important right now ... You see, if you were a farm, and things were growing, then we would give you a loan, but ...

Sounds like an Abbott and Costello sketch. But it's not. This is real life - a scenario being endured by a Ruskin citrus farm, a family farm.

But it's also about all of us, because Mike Houghtaling has been tangled up in this idiocracy, and his farm could soon go bankrupt.

This quagmire involves a family farm, the Hillsborough County Value Assessment Board and the massive USDA.

The short version of the story is that the USDA, reacting to a threat of citrus canker, burned out Mike's farm. The farm was banned from growing any crop for at least three years due to possible soil contamination from the canker. At year four, Mike had his farm prepped to replant. But the county ruled that since the farm had no crop, it would be no longer considered a farm. Therefore, the county revoked its greenbelt tax status.

That had the effect of burdening Mike with a massive bill for back taxes.

The USDA, seeing there was no longer a greenbelt exemption, declared the farm ineligible for a loan to replant. The aerial photo of the farm used for the tax assessment actually shows the grandfather and grandson clearing the USDA-inflicted carnage in the process of prepping the land to begin the farm anew.

No, this is not a chapter out of "Punked." This situation is all the more egregious considering the American family farm has all but disappeared. What makes it worse is when a small farmer is done in by bureaucracy, as if he had been sucked into a chapter of Catch 22.

Mike raises minneolas. Well, he used to. Not many farmers raise minneolas. He fills a valued niche in the marketplace, so much so that he recently procured a 10-year contract to produce them, which will make his farm sustainable and even profitable.

But that commitment from a buyer is not enough to secure a loan from the USDA because, in its view, Mike's property is no longer a farm.

Mike would beg to differ.

For more information on this story, please go to www.SaveMyParentsFarm.com.