The program, if approved, would target smaller companies than those that won a share of more than $100 million in salmon and pollock purchases by the federal government earlier this year.
I really appreciate you covering these fishery issues. I find the senator’s comment that it’s hard to directly subsidize fisherman a little suspicious. I’m not a fan of subsidies in general, but they are sometimes necessary for emergencies. What difference does it make if a fisherman has paid off his or her boat or not? We all have significant expenses and operating costs, and we’re all getting hit by the uncertainty of the market.
Fishermen are at the bottom of the “payment chain,” getting whiplash from falling fish prices and the rising cost of everything else. I understand there are major capital investments and operating expenses involved at a plant, but it sounds like the situation has created an opportunity for processors to capture as much of the subsidies as possible and then blame market forces, excess products, Russia, maintenance costs, whatever, and leave the fishermen in the cold.
I’m just thinking out loud on the Internet here, but is there some kind of mechanism for transparency as to how those subsidies are spent? Government money is taxpayer money. If a business takes a taxpayer bailout, it should have to show how it spent that money, and if that business has a fleet of small proprietors downstream of it, there should be some method of accounting for the ‘trickle down.’
Too bad SeaShare is all about greenwashing the trawl industry
Imagine the earth as a single cell in the cosmos and humans a parasite…
I really appreciate you covering these fishery issues. I find the senator’s comment that it’s hard to directly subsidize fisherman a little suspicious. I’m not a fan of subsidies in general, but they are sometimes necessary for emergencies. What difference does it make if a fisherman has paid off his or her boat or not? We all have significant expenses and operating costs, and we’re all getting hit by the uncertainty of the market.
Fishermen are at the bottom of the “payment chain,” getting whiplash from falling fish prices and the rising cost of everything else. I understand there are major capital investments and operating expenses involved at a plant, but it sounds like the situation has created an opportunity for processors to capture as much of the subsidies as possible and then blame market forces, excess products, Russia, maintenance costs, whatever, and leave the fishermen in the cold.
I’m just thinking out loud on the Internet here, but is there some kind of mechanism for transparency as to how those subsidies are spent? Government money is taxpayer money. If a business takes a taxpayer bailout, it should have to show how it spent that money, and if that business has a fleet of small proprietors downstream of it, there should be some method of accounting for the ‘trickle down.’