In the next few weeks, Congress is planning to take up a new, five-year farm bill. The time is ripe for members to get U.S. agricultural policy out of the farm-subsidy furrow it's been stuck in for decades.

What's wrong with farm subsidies? Where do we start? They cost U.S. taxpayers at least $20 billion a year, yet primarily benefit large farms, often corporate owned. Nearly 90 percent of subsidies go to farmers of five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. Two-thirds of U.S. farmers don't get a nickel; they manage to rely on the market instead of the government. Less than 1 percent of payments between 1995 and 2005 went to Florida farms.

With payments usually based on the amount of crops grown, farm subsidies fuel overproduction, wasting limited resources and adding to environmental damage from pesticides and fertilizers. They promote the processing and consumption of fattening foods from subsidized crops while neglecting healthier fruits and vegetables.

The negative impact of subsidies goes far beyond U.S. borders. They undermine negotiations on trade agreements that would open more international markets to U.S. goods and services. They doom farmers and deepen poverty in countries that can't afford to pay their own subsidies; U.S. taxpayers end up sending more foreign aid to those countries to compensate. Subsidized U.S. corn has helped drive millions of Mexican farmers off their land and added to the flow of illegal immigrants heading north.

Farm subsidies have always made more political than economic sense. They are jealously guarded by members of Congress from states where subsidized crops are grown.

In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the last farm bill — a bloated measure that nearly doubled subsidies. But earlier this year, the president proposed a new and better plan that would reduce subsidies and other payouts by $18 billion over five years. Bush's plan would cut farm-loan programs that have been challenged as illegal under world-trade rules, end handouts to farmers earning more than $200,000 a year, and hike funding for land conservation and farm-grown fuels.

Meanwhile, fruit and vegetable growers and environmental groups have joined together to lobby Congress to put more money for produce as well as conservation in the next farm bill. Those changes, along with others backed by the president, would mark an improvement over the current policy.

With all that's wrong with farm subsidies, it would be far better for Congress and the president to begin phasing them out instead of getting more growers hooked on government handouts. The United States would reap a more bountiful harvest without farm subsidies.