sitting in high cotton

Arguably the single biggest waste of taxpayer money is farm subsidies. These subsidies enumerated in the much discussed "farm bill" amount to ~100 Billion dollars. Recently The Economist has reported that one portion of this - 3 billion dollars in cotton subsidies over which the US is unwilling to negotiate - has caused the breakdown of WTO talks. (For the record, European countries who also subsidizes cotton, were also to blame). The 3 billion dollar subsidy amounts to 120,000 dollars for each of the 25,000 Americans who grow cotton. These 25,000 people are taking $10 per man woman and child in the USA to split up among themselves. This is not including subsidized water that allows these farmers to grow this water intensive¹ crop in, for example, dry climates in Arizona and California.

I want my $10 back. And, for that matter, the other $320 being given to farming corporations . Now, Don't get me wrong, I can see how awful it would be if farmers in Africa were able to cash in on a competitive advantage and escape from a life of miserable poverty And I can see how terrible it would be if 3rd world farmers could make money on crops other than coca and poppies ( Coca and poppies, being grown in the US by non-corporate entities, do not get the subsidies they need to squash foreign competition ) But it just seems that $330 per person is a bit too high a price to pay.


1) it takes 257 gallons of water to grow a T-shirt according to this Economist review. For more info on cotton subsidies and their impact on foreign countries, you can read this 37 page pdf file.