Federal Farm Subsidy Payments
July 3rd, 2006 | Published in Fed Data, Mapping
Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen of the Washington Post used federal data and documents to find that “nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all. The Post’s nine-month investigation found farm subsidy programs that have become so all-encompassing and generous that they have taken much of the risk out of farming for the increasingly wealthy individuals who dominate it.” The paper’s three-part series includes an interactive map showing the largest recipients by county for the past year.