Osomir
VIP Member
Last year, farmers bought insurance for 282 million acres of American farmland. Most of the premiums an average of 62 percent were paid by taxpayers. Three-quarters of the insurance subsidies go to four crops: corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat. And with crop prices rising, both premiums and subsidies have been increasing to keep pace. A program that cost the federal government between $2.1 billion and $3.9 billion from 2000 to 2007 last year rose to $14 billion.
Senate's new farm bill will waste billions on subsidies, critics say - CSMonitor.com
The article contains quite a bit of information. Generally speaking I'd have to say that I hope the bill doesn't pass, IE I am not in favor of higher subsidies for US farmers. In fact, I'd like to see them dropped significantly and the markets become more liberalized. There are especially quite a few crops that we perhaps shouldn't even be growing in the first place (like cotton, where we only have a significant comparative advantage due to subsidies). In times of needed budget cuts this seems like a good area to target from an economic point of view, and it would also serve to open the market up more.