Subsidies

Most farmers who grow produce are prickly about the subject of government subsidy.  They like to believe they are Marlboro Men; strong, independent T.N.S. kind of guys who sneer at those softies who take government handouts.  At least until a weather catastrophe knocks the cig out of their mouth.  Meanwhile, the growers of the so called commodity crops; corn, wheat, soybean and cotton have their snouts deep in the government trough and are unapologetic.  These are mostly the largest farms, running to tens of thousands of acres, and the people running them look more like accountants than cowboys.  The new farm bill shuffles the subsdies around, but the pigs will still be at the trough, even though commodity prices are at levels not seen since the "fencepost to fencepost" days of the mid 70s.  I guess it is a rhetorical question to wonder why the 500 acre veg grower can't get access to the kind of government largess his 10,000 acre soybean growing competitor is getting.  Besides, we all know what happened to the Marlboro Man.