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Record-breaking farm subsidy payouts in the United States 19 Dec 2006
posted by Jack Thurston
Our friends at the Environmental Working Group have this week released new data on farm subsidy payments in the United States for 2005. According to EWG, 2005 "is by far the most expensive year for farm subsidy payments since the controversial 2002 Farm Bill was enacted". Campaigning work by EWG and the Washington Post newspaper has opened US farm subsidies wide open to public scrutiny with the result that when it comes to farm subsidies the United States is now far more transparent than the European Union.
Payments tracked through EWG's Farm Subsidy Database exceeded $21 billion last year, of which $16 billion (76 percent) was provided in commodity subsidies, with $1.9 billion for conservation and $3 billion for disaster aid.
A majority of farmers-66 percent, according to the Census of Agriculture-do not collect government payments, largely because they do not grow one of the five crops that account for over 90 percent of the payments in any given year (rice, wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans).
Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 73 percent of all subsidies amounting to $120.5 billion over 11 years.
The top 10 percent of recipients between 1995 and 2005, who numbered 320,442, averaged $34,190 each in annual payments over that period. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients (over 2.5 million of them) saw only $704 on average per year-48 times less than those at the top of the subsidy pyramid.
Listen to Ken Cook in conversation with farmsubsidy.org co-founder Jack Thurston as part of the German Marshall Fund of the US's podcast series:
MP3 (13.5 MB)
Only a question. What is so outrageous about ensuring safe, healthy, and plentiful food for a country?
The amounts of money referred to are huge if you live on my budget. However, when taken in comparison to the entire budget of the United States, are these amounts so outrageous? What does the American citizen pay on a daily basis for the production agricultural products?
If the United States stopped producing corn and wheat and the rest of the world had to produce it all, what would corn and wheat cost? Why is it that no questions like mine are asked or answered?
How much of the agricultural produce that is produced in the United States is produced by the 10 per cent of the recipients of the government payments?
Are you and the Environmental Working Group not telling the entire story? If this story is so bad, why do you not break the numbers out in a way that relates to the amount one person in the United States pays for this? How much are other industries in the United States subsidized in comparison to agriculture? Show me how much the people of other countries are paying per day on an individual basis after currency differentials and costs of living differentials are taken into consideration.
I am not so sure that you are telling me all that I need to know. Are you dogging one industry and ignoring others? Give me something to compare this to so that I can grasp what this means to me as an individual.
why dont you list the usa under thisn group?
I would love to pay the price, for milk and honey.
Would u Mr Mulvad ?
Not obvious...but envious u are !!
In response to John Quinn's more than reasonable question on USA farm subsidy payments I would respond that the problem lies not within the USA. It exists when the subsidised product is made available internationally for trade/sale.
With the subsidy already paid to the farmer, the product is sold at a vastly reduced price that other country's farmers cannot match, where these farmers operate without subsidy from their own government. At times the farm subsidies are so large that the product is seen as being given away; farmers in developing countries cannot compete under these circumstances and end up leaving the land to join the evergrowing urban poor in their major cities.
Grenville Smith
But how many people get those money anyway ? 1% ? i think this is generous enough.
I am glad that someone raised the international dimension of the issue of subsidy in America. The US should begin to think of the impact of its subsidies on the competitiveness of agricultural output in developing countries. Meanwhile, these developing countries have been forced to eliminate all forms of subsidy on their outputs. Is this a double standard world ? Is it fair ? How can you eliminate poverty of the peasants in Nigeria and other developing countries this way ? Please, we need answers from the World Bank and IMF as well as the Government of the US.