Subsidies on Autopilot

Publication Date: November 2007

Publisher: Environmental Working Group

Author(s): Ken Cook; Chris Campbell

Research Area: Agriculture, forestry and fishing

Keywords: farm subsidies; direct payments

Type: Report

Abstract:

For decades, the farm subsidy lobby has claimed that if the producers it represents could earn their living in the marketplace, support provided by taxpayers through periodic "farm bills" could be invested instead in such perennially short-changed priorities as conservation, nutrition assistance for low income Americans, and rural development. But even though many subsidized farmers are projected to receive record crop prices and earn record farm incomes over the next five years, the subsidy lobby is still demanding $26 billion in automatic payments from taxpayers over that period in the 2007 farm bill.