Glickman in effect lifted a $150,000 yearly maximum in cash subsidies by allowing growers to receive certificates that can be redeemed for government-held commodities. The growers can resell either the certificates or the commodities. The move was passed last fall with bipartisan backing.

Glickman, who said this decision opens the door to some "mighty big payments," noted the move "will be embarrassing to American agriculture." The New York Times said, "As many as 2,600 of the nation's biggest farms, including corporate operations, stand to reap millions of dollars in unlimited cash subsidies" under the program.

The agriculture department seeks to use the move to adjust a current program where farmers take out federal loans to grow crops and are allowed to give back some of the crop to the government rather than repay the loan. Under these rules farmers were forecast to turn over nearly a million bales of cotton to the government this year.

The National Cotton Council pushed for the change, saying, "From our perspective the best bet for all producers is to get the cotton out into the market."

The subsidy limit already was doubled this year from $75,000 in 1999. Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska observed that the move "helps the big operations push out the small."

Figures from Iowa on where farm subsidies go help illustrate class divisions in the countryside, as well as which class the programs benefit.

Between 1996 and 1998 farm owners and operators in Iowa received more than $2 billion in farm subsidies, according to an Environmental Working Group report. The report broke down the payments as follows:

• Half of the funds, or $1 billion, went to a wee 12 percent--mostly farm corporations.
• 51 percent of the state's farmers received less than $6,000 each over that three-year period.
• 21 percent, or 29,000 farmers, got less than $1,000 a year.
• 4,000 farmers received $100 or less a year.

"While rich farmers got richer, thousands of other Iowa farmers got less money than a welfare recipient," said Environmental Working Group executive director Kenneth Cook. The "meaningless subsidies" of $100 or less a year, Cook said, were just "enough to buy a single sack of high-quality corn seed that would cover two or three acres, but not enough to plant, fertilize, or harvest it."  
 
 
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