Contrarian: Farm Programs and Small Farms

One piece of conventional wisdom, among the greens and rapidly spreading among the chattering classes, is that farm programs aid big farms. This is wisdom that isn't true. The following are true, at least mostly so:

• "farm programs" aid field crop farmers, not fruit, vegetable, or livestock farms
• "payment limitations" are often evaded, so are not very effective in limiting farm program payments to large farmer
• "farm program payments" often go to landowners who do no physical "farming"
• "farm program payments" are often issued in the names of legal entities, not living persons
• small farmers need help more than large farmers.
  

What you can't say is that "farm programs" distort or change the pecking order of farms for any given commodity. The big corn farms today would be the big corn farms without any programs.