(Part one of a series on farm subsidies)

What farmers and taxpayers don't know about future agriculture subsidies is a lot.

With the U.S. Senate failing to pass a new farm bill before breaking for the holidays, questions remain unanswered regarding what types of farm subsidies will be paid in the future, what strings will be attached to the money and how much it will cost.

While many Senators and a host of others agree that the current farm subsidy system is broken, they disagree on the degree and nature of mending needed.

Meanwhile, farmers are on standby, wondering if, and how their livelihoods and farming practices might change.

"In agriculture, as in any other business, you don't necessarily operate in neat, square little 12-month blocks," said Al Christopherson, president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau. "But rather, as we are planning for this year's crop, we kind of need to know what we're going to do with that particular land, or any other resource we have, next year, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted a farm bill this year."

Farmers and others also worry about losing money for agriculture to other programs because of delays.

"The administration keeps telling us that the dollars will be there next year, don't worry about it," Christopherson said. "Well, I don't think everybody is quite so confident."

A new farm bill proposal came out of the Senate Agriculture Committee with unanimous consent, but it failed this month to rally support of the full Senate. The Democratic bill puts greater emphasis on environmental programs than the House bill, which passed in October.

"Make no mistake -- we aren't giving up," Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Min.) said. "When (Senator) Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and I come back to Washington in January, we are going to pick up where we left off, and keep working hard to get this bill passed quickly."

Dayton and Wellstone, among other senators, wanted the bill pushed through this year, despite urging from the Bush administration to delay action. The current bill expires next fall.

The White House has issued a statement saying the Democratic bill's increased crop subsidies would deepen problems with overproduction and low commodity prices and would likely exceed the limit on U.S. farm subsidies under the World Trade Organization and spending limits in a congressional budget agreement.

Democrats contend the bill would cost $170 billion over 10 years, the limit in this year's congressional budget agreement.

"Because of the failure of the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996 to provide our family farmers with an adequate safety net, the federal government has had to spend billions of dollars in emergency assistance for farmers each year -- close to $33 billion over the last five years," Dayton said. "We cannot continue this pattern. It is hurting our farmers, and it is fiscally irresponsible."

Taxpayers have pumped about $72 billion into the farm economy since Congress passed the 1996 farm act. Government aid last year made up nearly half of total farm income nationwide through a variety of programs, including government loans, loan deficiency payments, disaster funding, crop insurance and the Conservation Reserve Program.

In return for these payments, taxpayers have reaped stable and relatively cheap food prices.

Minnesota ranks sixth in the nation for subsidy payments, rising from about $3.49 million in 1996 to $1.51 billion in 2000, for a five-year total of $4.48 billion, according to USDA data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit agency that has posted every federal farm payment made between 1996 and 2000 on a Web site.

The Web site is fielding mixed reviews, as well as drawing a lot of traffic -- more than 11 million hits so far, said Anne Keys, EWG's vice president for policy. USDA figures were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Keys said EWG assembled subsidy payment figures to make a point that too much federal farm spending is concentrated among a handful of farmers who grow a narrow range of crops -- wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, cotton, rice and barley.

"These are depression-era decisions that have not been rethought in any kind of fundamental way for 70 years," Keys said.

The 1996 farm bill was supposed to substantially reduce farm subsidies by 2002. Former production controls were lifted, freeing farmers to plant what they wished in exchange for gradually entering the free market.

During the transition, farmers were to be paid fixed, but declining payments based on past production, without regard for financial need. However, prices toppled in 1998 under an overabundance of grain and beans worldwide, and export sales declined amid foreign competition, prompting Congress to appropriate emergency disaster payments.

Contrary to the bill's stated aim to bolster small and medium-sized family farms, records show that the number of Minnesota farms has declined over the last decade, from about 90,000 to 79,000, and the number of subsidy recipients has declined by 470. More than half of Minnesota's farm payments go to about 9,000 farmers

Meanwhile, the average farm size has grown from 333 acres to 362. About 20 percent of farms account for 80 percent of production and farm income.

"Freedom to Farm has meant freedom to fail for millions of family farmers around the country and in Minnesota," Wellstone said.