From Brad Blog (“Food Incorporated”):

“When they were first introduced during the early days of the New Deal, farm subsidies were intended to stabilize prices in order to offset the extraordinary low prices brought on by over-production and by the Great Depression; to keep farmers on their farms and in their homes.

Today, it would be fair to say that farm subsidies, like Wall Street bailouts, flow to those who need them the least.

In Thieves in High Places, Jim Hightower provides the classic example — billionaire stockbroker Charles R. Schwab; the proud owner of Casa de Patos, “1,500 acres of picturesque wetlands in Northern California.” Schwab grows rice on the land, not for harvesting purposes but because the rice attracts ducks. Schwab is one of those rich folks who likes to invite friends and clients to go duck hunting. (Careful you don’t invite Dick Cheney, Mr. Schwab.)

So Schwab has no intent to harvest the rice, but that doesn’t prevent this man with an estimated $4.7 billion net worth from collecting $500,000/year in federal farm subsidies because he does not market the rice.

Hightower laments, “Sadly, it’s legal, and it’s a fine upstanding example of what George [W. Bush] and his base like to call ‘entrepreneurship.'”