Word: farm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...result is that farm payments that used to cost a few billion dollars a year have averaged $17 billion. They'll be lower this year because commodity prices are so high. But owners of eligible farmland will still get direct payments regardless of how much their farms earn or whether their farms are still farmed. And even though crop-insurance subsidies have increased nearly tenfold, farmers will still receive disaster aid if things go badly, no matter how often that happens. More than 21,000 farmers have cashed at least 11 disaster checks each in the past 21 years...
CRITICS OFTEN EXAGGERATE THE IMPACT of farm programs, as if the Great Plains would become amber waves of arugula if only we stopped subsidizing King Corn. But government policies are supposed to reflect national priorities. Politics isn't destiny, but it does influence behavior on the margins. And in a country with 1 billion acres (40 million hectares) of farms and ranches, we've got big margins...
...subsidies for the grain-industrial complex to conservation payments for eco-sensitive farmers of any size. The results would be less erosion; more restoration of grasslands and wetlands; and less degradation of water bodies like the Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades, the Colorado River and the Gulf of Mexico, where farm nutrients have created a 5,000-sq.-mi. (13,000 sq km) dead zone...
...successfully challenged our cotton subsidies in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a recent congressional report admitted "all major U.S. program crops are potentially vulnerable to WTO challenges." When U.S. officials urge the world to embrace free markets and free trade, the inevitable response is, What about your farm programs? "Our credibility is zero," says economist Daniel Sumner, a former Assistant Agriculture Secretary who runs the University of California's Agricultural Issues Center. "Every other country thinks of us as a liar and a crook...
...taking a hit in the global economy. In the Doha round of trade negotiations, the U.S. and Europe are supposed to slash farm supports, and the rest of the world is supposed to slash tariffs and other barriers on everything from cars to software to wood to wine to legal and financial services. But for several years, our reluctance to cut farm supports has stalled the talks, kneecapping American firms ranging from Microsoft to FedEx to Anheuser-Busch, and even American farmers who rely on exports. "The problem is a vested political constituency that's absolutely committed to the status...