Half of Farm Subsidies Go To Twenty-Two Congressional Districts
That would be about $82 billion and change over the past eleven years.
Here's the list. Scroll down to number 22 and you'll top 50 percent of all subsidies.
These are big districts; some of them are entire states, of course. But they don't comprise half the farms, half the farmland, half the value of farm production in this country, or half the demand for federal assistance to deal with problems in rural America.
That imbalance is one reason why we're hearing more from fruit, vegetable and livestock producers, conservationists, and rural development experts about the need for new, fairer ways to invest federal farm bill resources.
Comments
Good to see you blogging, Ken. Your work in opening up US farm subsidies to public scrutiny is an inspiration for the growing network of transparency activists and researchers in Europe. We're slowly squeezing the data out, country-by-country and sometimes region-by-region, it's certainly a long haul but it is already having a big impact on the debate.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Jack Thurston | December 27, 2006 7:52 PM