Article

2025-04-02 Government Corruption

USDA paid to study queer farmers, Latinx masculinity, more on taxpayer dime

[THECENTERSQUARE] U.S. taxpayers have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars in recent years to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for research on LGBT issues, the kind of funding now under scrutiny by the Trump administration.

The research relies on conducting interviews — in one case for $373 per Zoom call — to explore a researcher's hypothesis of widespread discrimination.

For instance, one taxpayer-funded research grant studied ''queer farmers quality of life in Pennsylvania,'' federal records show, one of several grants of its kind.

The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Projects — a federally funded research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — paid $14,997 for the 2018 grant.

While this grant is relatively small, there are others, and critics argue the spending is a distraction from helping farmers and lowering food prices, which soared during the Biden administration alongside this kind of research funding.

The aforementioned 2018 queer farmers grant went to Pennsylvania State University for a project titled: ''Sexuality and Sustainable Agriculture: Examining Queer Farmers' Quality of Life in Pennsylvania.''

The grant proposal says the topic is ''~~stoopid~~ ~~dumb~~ woefully understudied.''

Posted by Fred 2025-04-02 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11161 views ] Top

#1 Personally, I find the whole idea of queer farming incredibly problematic. I mean, how do you even verify consensuality of the necessary hetero or turkey baster sex in that environment? And then there's the preference selections and cis shredders and prevailing systemic homophobia...

Posted by Pancho Poodle8452 2025-04-02 04:20|| 2025-04-02 04:20|| Front Page Top

#2 USDA’s woke boondoggle spent taxpayer dollars on DEI insanity

Posted by Skidmark 2025-04-02 07:03|| 2025-04-02 07:03|| Front Page Top

#3 Some of these researches seem very interested in queer stuff. I’m beginning to wonder if some of them might be queer themselves.

Posted by Super Hose 2025-04-02 08:09|| 2025-04-02 08:09|| Front Page Top

#4 ^ Wonder?

Posted by Frank G 2025-04-02 08:30|| 2025-04-02 08:30|| Front Page Top

#5 ^ We would all love to get paid for our hobbies. Plus doing "academic research" means you never have to produce results, just words and more grant applications.

And let's not forget extra-curricular activities:
"Say, what are you doing later after this interview about your sex life?"

Posted by SteveS 2025-04-02 08:41|| 2025-04-02 08:41|| Front Page Top

#6 I don't think "plowing a furrow" means what they think it means.

Posted by Skidmark 2025-04-02 09:04|| 2025-04-02 09:04|| Front Page Top

#7
Imagine a Retired couple reading this, while the Gov is placing a TAX LIEN or foreclosing, on heir family home.

Posted by NN2N1 2025-04-02 10:47|| 2025-04-02 10:47|| Front Page Top

#8 Remember that article the other day about how to write grants and proposals using the appropriate buzz words and catch phrases to them the guarantor know you are 'one of our people'?

They are dryer sheets in the money launder - the payouts to local agents.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-04-02 12:34|| 2025-04-02 12:34|| Front Page Top

#9 One of our people? All one need do is read a half dozen publications in the latest issue of the leading journal in the field/subfield to know exactly what the latest grant-getting buzzwords and concepts are.

Even when doing rocket science that part isn’t rocket science.

Posted by trailing wife 2025-04-02 21:15|| 2025-04-02 21:15|| Front Page Top

#10 That it was said out loud was the news.

And you are right, that a key word search by a simple person like myself would show that. What would be interesting, is if key word/phrase combinations, with certain ones receiving a numbered value, which puts together, if you will, a 'riff' or 'fugue' which a find algorithm spots and ranks to eliminate 'trolls'.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-04-02 21:35|| 2025-04-02 21:35|| Front Page Top

#11 *I'm playing off the olde concept of receiving a letter, laying a template with cut-outs, on top of the message to decipher the hidden message. But like in 3-D.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-04-02 21:39|| 2025-04-02 21:39|| Front Page Top