I had the great privilege of growing up on a dairy farm in the Midwest during the 1960s. While much has changed since then, Tuesday's passage of the farm bill reminds us of one thing that has not — price supports, government-subsidized crop insurance and other goodies that just about anyone with a business would love to have.

These subsidies have broad support from both parties; similar help for the poor, not so much. The one thing that has changed is that money now flows in much bigger buckets to many fewer farmers, largely corporate ones. I have come to learn that socialism is defined by nearly all of us as government money that goes to someone other than ourselves.

MICHAEL EMERSON, Eden Prairie