Not content to lavish federal subsidies on farmers and landowners just because they grow certain agricultural crops, Congress is also in the business of subsidizing them even when they do NOT grow those crops. In a major expose, the Washington Post reports that the federal government pays out billions of dollars in subsidies to landowners based on past production of certain program crops, such as rice, even when the land is no longer used to grow the crops. As a result, federal farm subsidies are being paid to landowners who have no interest in farming. As the Post reported yesterday:

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, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

Other federal farm programs offer “loan deficiency payments” to corn growers in Iowa and elsewhere when the price of corn falls below a certain minimum. Farmers collect the payments even if they eventually sell their corn at a higher, profitable price. According to a Post story today, the program has cost American taxpayers $4.8 billion in the current fiscal year, and $29 billion since 1998.

Federal farm subsidies are not only costly to the U.S. Treasury but they also distort global agricultural markets by encouraging overproduction. Those subsidies contributed to the demise of the current round of trade negotiations in the World Trade Organization. A Cato Institute study last year, titled “Ripe for Reform,” documented the many ways Americans are hurt by our own farm programs.

Of course, members of Congress from farm states refuse to give up these costly programs unless other countries agree to reform their own farm programs. As today’s Post story concludes: “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R‑Iowa) has warned U.S. trade negotiators not to bow to foreign pressure unless they win major concessions for U.S. agriculture. ‘We’re not going to buy a pig in a poke,’ he said.”

“Pig in a poke” sounds like a fitting description of our own farm programs.