Farmers With Benefits

Reader Contribution by Eli Lehrer
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This article originally appeared in The Weekly Standard on April 19, 2013. It is reprinted here with permission.

American farmers did well in 2012, to say the least. They benefited from record-high commodity prices, burgeoning organic produce markets and high sale prices for farmland. As they have for two decades, farm families took home more annual income—about $20,000 more on average—than non-farm families. And they could count on many friends in Congress: While facing a “fiscal cliff,” the uncertain sustainability of entitlement programs and the near certainty of tax increases, members of both parties came together around bills that would have spent at least $950 billion on agricultural subsidies over the next 10 years, an increase of more than $300 billion from the most recent (2008) farm bill.

While gridlock and the press of other issues resulted in Congress deciding to kick the can until September of this year, the fundamental contours of the debate remain the same. Most conversation in Congress revolves around how much federal largess to farmers should grow, and hardly anybody questions whether or not the subsidies ought to continue.

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