Most farm aid goes to a fortunate few
The myth of the government saving the struggling family farm is a persistent one. In response to my criticisms of the farm bill, a reader named Debbie writes:
I work at a grain elevator north of St. Louis, and work with a variety of farmers. Most are struggling year to year. They need a good year now and then to keep operating. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about actors, etc., that buy land and fall into the farmer category, or real farmers like I see every day.
I responded by referring her to a great database:
You may be right about the majority of farmers being small-time operators who are struggling. But the majority of the government money goes to a handful of corporations and wealthy individuals. The Environmental Working Group has a useful database of subsidy recipients.
I also shared one telling statistic from the EWG site:
Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 74 percent of all subsidies, amounting to $130.6 billion over 12 years.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Agriculture is like the energy industry in that it is very cyclical. In both industries, the thing that gives producers the incentive to keep the business going in years of losses, is the prospect of having years of high profits to offset the losses.
A big political difference is that when the energy companies have years of high profits, the profits are labelled as “excessive” by the people who became accustomed to excessively low energy prices during the years when energy producers were losing money. The next thing is a hue and cry for taxing the “excessive profits.”
In contrast, the “poor farmers” are not accused of “price gouging” when the cost of farm goods rises — which is OK — but then they even get the their floor payment subsidies boosted!
So, Ted44,
Are you a farmer?