I want candy

The USDA recently announced it provided $800 million to assist farmers who were struggling to pay their federal farm loans. The USDA's statement said 11,000 farmers had their accounts brought current by the funds, and the USDA also paid went ahead and paid the next annual installment for direct loan borrowers. The Department of Ag also said it plans to administer $66 million in separate automatic payments, using COVID relief funds, to support up to 7,000 farmers with direct loans. And, as Randy Evans pointed out in his opinion piece this week, 21,000 producers who still owe money after their farm loans were foreclosed are each expected to get an average of about $101,000 from the USDA – Evans pointed out that's about five to 10 times the caps on student loan forgiveness.

Now, I don't disagree that farmers have had it rough the last couple years. Some were faced with grim decisions during the pandemic, like possibly having to put down livestock they could no longer afford. And I'm also not opposed to providing loan forgiveness or otherwise easing that burden but, like many areas of life, I think the concept should be applied equally. There was a lot of hubbub when it was announced the government planned to forgive some federal student loans, but I for one haven't heard the same criticism of forgiving farm loans. The thing is the logic seems like it should apply to both scenarios – when one signs a loan, one agrees to the risk and consequences associated with it.

Of course, part of the issue is the (admittedly correct) idea that without farmers, the rest of us generally go hungry. But what's absent from that argument is that, without doctors, the rest of us stay sick. Without teachers, the rest of us become uneducated. Heck, people take out student loans to get degrees in agriculture for crying out loud.

So let's admit that neither of these forgiveness plans is really worth criticizing. They both support necessary industries and, in the instances where the job may not benefit a large portion of society, it will at least free up funds for the borrower to start putting money back into the economy.

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I found myself with a bit more time than usual this week (trust me, it was an accident), so I decided to put some energy into a cartoon. The concept went through about seven sketch versions. The first one was just Uncle Sam handing a bag of money to a farmer and college student (hey, you gotta start somewhere with these things). Then I tried a little harder and thought about things the characters could actually be sharing – federal dollars flowing out of a faucet, a keg of federal loan forgiveness with two taps, two people washing their hands at separate sinks supplied through the same water main. But after some sleep, I thought it'd be better if Uncle Sam had a big bowl of something they both wanted.

Did I mention Halloween is coming?

And then it clicked – a farmer and a graduate trick or treating at Uncle Sam's but getting angry at each other for daring to take the free stuff.

Eventually, my free-time ran out, so I had to work off a very (emphasis on very) basic sketch and doing the rest digitally. Usually I like to have a bit more detail on paper before moving a cartoon to the digital tablet, but this worked out well. The bowl of candy took the grand majority of time, which left less time to develop the scene, so I relied on my old friend the spotlight. Again, I think putting the two characters' feet outside the oval added a good amount of flare for the time I had.

This cartoon took about three or four hours from sketch to final product.

Thanks for reading.

-Seth Boyes