Ag! What to Do About Farm Subsidies?

It’s not exactly a secret that U.S. agricultural policy is a giant mess, with more than $25 billion a year handed out in farm subsidies.  But reform is maddening, as legislators from farm districts, even those that pay lip service to the need for some type of reform, put roadblock after roadblock in the way.

So when I read in the New York Times that Democratic Senator Tom Harkin is trying to inch forward on reform, I’m curious but not exactly hopeful.  The truly needed reforms, like the one proposed by Senators Grassley and Dorgan to put a quarter or a million dollar cap on payments and — gasp! — restrict those payments to people who actually do real farming, don’t stand a chance.  When you can’t even limit farm subsidies to genuine farmers, you know there’s a problem.  But that’s the unfortunate reality when you’re working in a system when an unknown number of legislators are actually benefiting from the subsidies themselves, sometimes to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.