Taxpayers Still Support Tobacco Growers

 

The federal government recently announced a new $54 million, 12-week campaign using TV spots to encourage smokers to give up the habit, and state and federal spending on anti-smoking efforts have topped $800 million in some years.

Taxpayers may wonder, then, why the latest farm bill approved by the Senate contains support for the industry responsible for the product targeted by those anti-smoking ads — tobacco farming.

From 1995 through 2011, the federal government paid out $1.329 billion in subsidies for the tobacco industry.

Farm subsidies include commodity payments, crop insurance, marketing support, and agricultural research, and total agricultural subsidies have topped $20 billion in most recent years.

In 2011 alone, taxpayers shelled out $191,218,926 in tobacco subsidies to 58,350 recipients, according to figures provided by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

North Carolina receives the largest share of the subsidies — 39.7 percent of the total or $528 million from 1995 through 2011 — followed by Kentucky at 28.7 percent.

Tobacco subsidies are, however, dwarfed by outlays for other agricultural products. Corn subsidies amounted to more than $81 billion from 1995 through 2011 — including $4.6 billion last year — while taxpayers picked up the tab for $34.3 billion in wheat subsidies, $32 billion in cotton subsidies, $26 billion in soybean subsidies, and billions more for other crops.

Two other facts cited by the Mercatus Center: 62 percent of farms in the United States did not collect subsidy payments from 1995 through 2011, and 10 percent of farms collected 75 percent of all subsidies.

Subsidies during that period ranged from $25.8 billion in Texas to, curiously, $231,479 in the District of Columbia.

 

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