“But subsidies for crops like corn and wheat would rise dramatically if we went without a contemporary Farm Bill for an extended period of time. According to a press release issued in 2008 by the USDA, which addressed the potential affect of the 2002 Farm Bill lapsing in that year, “Price support rates for corn would almost double, from $1.95 to a minimum of $3.78 per bushel.” Payments to farmers who grow soybeans, an insignificant crop in 1949, would disappear. Tobacco farmers, whose federal support will be completely phased out by 2014, would go back to receiving subsidy payments formulated in an era when over 40% of adults smoked cigarettes.”
