Have you peeps heard me go on an ag subs rant yet? Prolly not. I hate agricultural subsidies almost as much as I hate rethuglikans and just as much as I hate the color yellow.

Once upon a time I wrote a very very long paper about the evils of farm subsidies. But it’s at home somewhere and I’m at work, so you’re going to have to trust for now that I am not really pulling numbers out of my ass and I promise to correct them if I get home and see that I’ve done wrong.

Farming in the US accounts for less than one half of one percent of all labor in the US (actually that farming, fishing and forestry). In France, it’s about 4%. As a portion of GDP it’s 1.3% for the US and 2.2% for the France. And we are the two biggest subsidizers of farming in the world, though we hardly need to be. 75% of those subsidies go to giant megafarms, not ma and pop farmer.

And corn, ah king corn. With the whiff of massive profit in the air and the safety net of giant subsidies at their feet, the scary megafarms stopped growing food and started growing corn for ethanol instead. Between 1995 and 2006 more than 52 BILLION dollars was spent subsidizing corn (there are no numbers for 2007 yet).

Since 1996 money to farms has increased while the food stamp program has seen it’s budget cut again and again. So let’s take a look at that. Less than one half of one percent of the population benefits from farm subsidies, while 12 percent of the population as a whole and 10 percent of families live under the poverty threshold.