Dublin Farms in Corcoran (Kings County) ranks second in the country in the amount of so-called direct payments that it will receive from the government for nothing more than having grown in the past one of a handful of government-subsidized crops. Direct payments have become a central target of reformers seeking to change the $288 billion, five-year farm bill, whose crop subsidies they contend aggravate obesity and other health problems, harm the environment, concentrate farm ownership,...

A rice farming hamlet of about 400 Tay ethnic minority people without telephones, television or even electricity, Na Lia is part of another Vietnam, the rural hinterland that is struggling to catch up with the boom. Rice grows in small paddies but the hills are denuded from erosion caused by slash-and-burn farming and felling of trees by villagers to sell for timber. Back in the one-room house he shares with his mother, he says what most impressed him about Hanoi was electricity, but that...

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The program, using arcane formulas, provides subsidies to farmers to maintain certain price levels for selected crops, including cotton, corn, rice and wheat. Agricultural interests such as the Texas Farm Bureau support the subsidies, saying they are necessary to keep domestic products competitive with cheaper imports. They charge that the subsidies increasingly help wealthy and absentee landowners more than family farmers, and they want to slim down the program in the new farm bill before...

The national weight problem is fed, in some part, by the prevalence of grain-fed beef, corn-sweetened soft drinks, and soybean-based cooking oils, they say. Out of the venture grew a documentary film linking America's abundance of major, subsidized crops to its obesity epidemic. In response to growing concerns about health, particularly children's health, the new five-year farm bill going before the Senate now provides a record $2 billion for specialty crops, including money to buy fruits...