EL CAMPO, Texas, July 2 (UPI) -- U.S. land owners have been receiving federal payments intended for farmers, despite not farming their land, The Washington Post said Sunday.
Since 2000, the federal government has paid out at least $1.3 billion to people who do no farming.
The program began in 1996 with a bill congressional Republicans called the Freedom to Farm Act, a program intended to phase out complicated government subsidies for farmers and replace them with annual cash payments, the Post said.
The federal payments are hardly restricted, and land owners can collect even if they do no farming, do not live on the property, or are already millionaires. The program mainly benefits the wealthy land owners who dominate the farming landscape, the Post reported.
The area most affected by the spending has been the Texas rice belt, once topping 600,000 acres and now at 200,000 acres today. With no financial consequences for the refusal to farm, most land owners are choosing the easy money, the Post said.
