Distribution of Federal Agricultural Subsidies

Factual Questions
1

I recently got in an argument with someone regarding whom benefits the most from subsidies, small farmers or large corporations. Is there anywhere on the internet that breaks down the distribution in general, to settle this? I know the entire mess is rather labyrinthine, but I’d appreciate help here, as well as any good books on the subject.

2

The entire argument needs to be framed better.

  1. There aren’t as many subsidies as there used to be, for anyone.

  2. Almost all farms that aren’t hobbies are owned by corporations for tax purposes. The fact is, that the corporation is owned by the Brown family, who lives down the road. The Brown family corporation now owns something like 20 small farms, whose original owners sold out to them. Does the Brown family count as a “big corporation?”

  3. There are farm management companies who run the farm for the widow Green, after her husband passed away. Widow Green still holds title to the land and gets a check after the management company takes their share. Who benefits from the subsidy?

  4. Some parts of farming (notably poultry production) really are controlled by big corporations, but that part of the industry really doesn’t get that much in the way of subsidies. Dairy farmers get a price support subsidy, the theory being you can’t just turn off the cow when there’s an oversupply and turn her back on when there’s a shortage. Most dairy farms in California are owned by big corporations, while Wisconsin has a mix and states like Pennsylvania and New York are almost all small, privately owned operations. So the answer there is, it depends.

  5. Aha, a real subsidy – tobacco farmers getting paid to get out of the business of growing tobacco. Believe it or not, most of them are small, individual farmers.

  6. Most big companies really don’t want to get into “production agriculture” (especially crops) because the returns are much less than they can get from their products and services. I personally heard a bigwig from Monsanto say that to a group of farmers in Indiana. Rather than being reassured, or even thinking it was a lie, the farmers got upset because they thought Monsanto was telling them that farming wasn’t good enough for a big corporation.