Farm+subsidies+in+US



__ Farm Subsidies in ____ US ____ Factsheet __ WHAT? An agricultural subsidy is a governmental subsidy paid to fanners to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities on international markets. Examples of such commodities include wheat, feed grains (grain used as fodder, such as maize, sorghum, barley, and oats), cotton, milk, rice, peanuts, sugar, tobacco, and oilseeds such as soybeans. WHY DO WE GIVE SUBSIDIES? To keep price of food low and stable(benefits poor). Help farmers compete with foreign farmers to keep our domestic food production ability. (in Millions) || WHY SHOULD WE NOT GIVE SUBSIDIES? Cheaper prices come from taxpayer money. Small farmers being driven out of business. Overproduction causes pollution, overconsumption of food(McDonald's). Poor farmers in developing countries can't compete, go out of business. We have a Socialist agricultural system, against principles of free market, insurance companies could serve to stabilize prices without overproduction or taxation. Commodity WHO GETS SUBSIDIES? About $ 16 billion/year is spent on agricultural subsidies. The big industrial farms get most of the subsidy money, because the more a farm produces, the more subsidy money it gets. Nationally, 66% of crop subsidy benefits go to 10% of the beneficiaries of those programs according to the USDA. Small farmers have been outcompeted by large scale industrial farming. In the 1930s, about 25% of the country's population resided on the nation's 6,000,000 small farms. By 1997, 157,000 large farms accounted for 72% of farm sales, with only 2% of the U.S. population residing on farms. HOW DO SUBSIDIES WORK? The subsidy programs give farmers extra money for their crops, as well as guarantee a price floor. For instance in the 2002 Farm Bill, for every bushel of wheat sold farmers were paid an extra 52 cents and guaranteed a  price of 3.86 from 2002-03 and 3.92 from 2004-2007.[1] That is, if Tobacco the price of wheat in 2002 was 3.80 farmers would get an extra 58 cents per bushel (52 cents plus the $0.06 price difference). Total The following is the subsidies by crop in 2004 in the United States. Bryan Fabert, 10/4/07
 * US % of Dollars Total
 * Feed Grains ||
 * Upland and 1,420 EIS Cotton ||
 * Wheat || 1,173 || 14.(  ||
 * Rice || 1,130 || ,14.'  ||
 * Soybeans and || 610 || 7-6  ||
 * products ||  ||  f ' '  ||
 * Dairy || 295 || i7  ||
 * Peanuts || 259 || 3.2  ||
 * Sugar || 61 || 0.8  ||
 * [[image:file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/user/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg width="150" height="86"]] ||
 * 18 ||
 * 0.2 ||
 * 8,022 100 ||