June 21, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

How farm subsidies hurt taxpayers, consumers and farmers

America’s farm subsidies are like many well-intentioned big government programs: they exacerbate many of the problems they’re intended to solve. Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl looks at some of the claimed benefits of these handouts and finds them wanting:

• Farm subsidies are intended to be consumer-friendly and taxpayer-friendly. Instead, they cost Americans billions each year in higher taxes and higher food costs.

• Farm subsidies are intended to alleviate farmer poverty, but the majority of subsidies go to com­mercial farms with average incomes of $200,000 and net worths of nearly $2 million.

• Farm subsidies are intended to raise farmer incomes by remedying low crop prices. Instead, they promote overproduction and therefore lower prices further.

• Farm subsidies are intended to help struggling family farmers. Instead, they harm them by exclud­ing them from most subsidies, financing the con­solidation of family farms, and raising land values to levels that prevent young people from entering farming.

“Instead of rubberstamping the status quo,” Riedl concludes, “they should return to the market-based approach embodied in the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act.”

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.