The Farm Lobby Racket

John Stossel reports:

As I wrote in "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity", most crops are not subsidized. Yet we have no shortages of fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry. America has plenty of peaches, plums, peas, green beans, etc., and farmers who grow those crops do fine. What makes wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice different?

Last week, the New York Times reported that dairy farmers in New Zealand get along perfectly well without subsidies: "[E]ver since a liberal but free-market government swept to power in 1984 and essentially canceled handouts to farmers -- something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible. ... [O]utput has soared."

Yet in America, our congressmen enact a 742-page farm bill that, among other things, includes 10 times more money than in 2002 for "specialty crops," including citrus, tomatoes and melons, and an amendment to include goat meat in the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling Program.

An amendment that would have withheld subsidies from farmers with incomes of $250,000 or more was rejected by the House.

The farm program is repulsive welfare for the rich. The average farmer earns much more than the average American.

And even rich nonfarmers have received subsidies -- among them the late Ken Lay of Enron; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; my ABC colleague Sam Donaldson; and banker David Rockefeller.

Time to separate agriculture from state.