When farmers or farm advocates talk about 2012 being a bad year, they're only telling part of the story.

For a business at the mercy of the weather, it's been a bad several years for farmers in much of the Midwest. The 2011 flood was followed by the 2012 drought. This spring there's an early drenching, but the long-range forecast is hot and dry.

"More than any time in recent years, we need a good crop," said Rick Tolman, chief executive of the Chesterfield-based National Corn Growers Association. "We had such a bad year."

Well, yes. But thanks to the magic of federal crop insurance, many farmers actually made more money than they would have with good weather and a bumper crop.

Iowa State University agricultural economist Bruce Babcock, in his study of federal crop insurance payouts in 2012, said payouts will reach $16 billion. That's up 50 percent from 2011. Farmers netted almost $12 billion from the program last year, far more than they paid in premiums.

Taxpayers take a hit three ways.

Because the farm lobby has so completely bought off Congress, taxpayers subsidize the cost of the premium, the cost to the insurance company and the ultimate payout.

Result? Since 2001, insurance companies involved in the crop insurance program have realized more than $10 billion in underwriting gains while taxpayers have lost $276 million.

The issue here isn't whether farmers should be protected from catastrophic losses. They should be. It's good public policy to protect both the nation's food supply and one of its most important industries.

But the crop insurance program is so bloated, so completely out of whack, that farmers — particularly the large corporate farmers who control the congressional agenda — make more money when times are bad than when harvests are good.

The incentives are all backward. Farmers get rewarded for planting where they are most likely to be flooded or punished by drought, and taxpayers bear most of the cost.

"The point is not to argue that the drought did not seriously affect crop yields. Clearly it did," Babcock wrote in his report, which was commissioned by the Environmental Working Group and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. "But given the high cost of the crop insurance program, it is reasonable to ask whether it makes any sense to entice farmers to buy Cadillac coverage with taxpayer dollars when a basic revenue guarantee is possible at much lower cost."

Congress, in its dysfunction, hasn't yet passed a new Farm Bill. The good news there is that the bill would make the bloated crop insurance program even worse.

The Farm Bill should not pass until every member of Congress reads Babcock's report. Democrats and Republicans alike will have their eyes opened (if not their minds) to amazing government waste that props up a few favored industries.

Republicans should see it as income redistribution. Democrats should decry the crony capitalism.

Will either of them have the courage to take on the farm lobby?

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH