Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 15, 1995                   TAG: 9506160020
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SUBSIDIES

Both farm payments and, say, the much-criticized Aid to Families with Dependent Children are federal programs (though the former is more completely so) whose costs contribute to the federal deficit. Both can make not working more profitable than working; for instance, by paying farmers not to plant crops in order to keep commodity prices up. Both were designed in the 1930s, under conditions far different from today's - agricultural subsidies as a safety net for farm families in an era before giant agribusinesses took over the industry; AFDC as a safety net for single-parent families in an era before mothers' working outside the home became routine.

There is, however, one obvious difference.

Absent serious fraud, which is more prevalent in popular myth than reality, AFDC recipients are poor.

Most (65 percent) farm-subsidy money goes to those with gross farm sales of more than $100,000 annually, according to a recent report from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. Very little (less than 5 percent) reaches farmers with sales of less than $10,000, most of whom have long since come to depend on other sources than agriculture for the bulk of their incomes.

No longer, in other words, is the farm program much of a safety net for small farmers. Rather, argues the report's author, John Frydenlund, the farm program has become an example of the inefficiencies of central economic planning that, thwarting market forces, ultimately hurts rather than helps the profitability of U.S. agriculture.