Report: $1.3 Billion Goes to Farmers Who Don't Farm

A nine-month investigation by the Washington Post reveals what many U.S. farmers have known for years: the aging and rarely noticed federal farm subsidy program suffers from mismanagement and lack of oversight to the modern tune of about $1.3 billion annually in payments to people who do not farm, many of them harvesting hundreds of thousands of dollars "without planting a seed."

The Post's article jives with a 2002 report from the bipartisan Heritage Foundation showing how far too much of the $171 billion allocated by Congress for direct farm subsidy payments over the next 10 years will benefit large corporate farms and agribusinesses, while leaving America's family farmers dieing on the vine.

Agricultural subsidies were created by the New Deal era Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 and, as defined by Wikipedia were intended to be "a governmental subsidy paid to farmers to supplement their income, help manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and bolster the supply of such commodities on international markets."