Advocacy group says Farm Bill did little to change pattern of payments to wealthy farmers

Despite lawmakers' promises that the 2008 Farm Bill would reduce payments to the most wealthy farmers, little seems to have changed, says new data from the Environmental Working Group. The new data released Wednesday shows that "Wealthiest farmers in the country are still receiving the bulk of government cash," Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press reports, and "series of exemptions written into the bill has made it more difficult for the public to find out who is receiving what."

EWG publishes a database every several years based on Freedom of Information Act requests to the Agriculture Department, which collects data on subsidies but doesn't organize it for the public to search, Jalonick writes. The new database shows "just 10 percent of farmers received 62 percent of federal farm payments in 2009, roughly the same amount as in 2007 and 2008, before the farm bill was enacted," Jalonick writes. "They are well dug in," Ken Cook, head of EWG, told Jalonick. "They have a strong interest in defending the status quo."

Randolph Rogers, a Hartsville, S.C., farmer who ranks 56th on the list of top recipients, told Jalonick those who want to change the way payments are made don't understand the high cost of farming. "Everybody just acts like we just put our money in our pockets," he said. "But it takes that money to operate." Rogers said his subsidy payments dropped after the bill was passed, but a loophole allowed him to recoup some of the money by adding his children and his wife to his farm corporation, called Rogers Bros. (Read more)