Despite its wholesome image and often outsized influence in Washington, agriculture in the United States actually constitutes a rather small percentage of the economy.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the economic output of farms and ranches makes up just 1 percent of our economy’s annual production. If you expand the scope to include industries directly related to agriculture or dependent on the products – bars and restaurants, some manufacturers, and forestry or fishing industries – the number jumps to 5.5 percent. All of us consume foods and goods produced by agricultural businesses.

Agricultural products are building blocks for everything from pharmaceuticals to industrial chemicals. We use corn-based ethanol as part of our transportation fuels – because of a mandate lobbied for by the corn industry. And farm bill income support programs dispersed more than $12 billion in federal tax dollars last year. This isn’t a small amount and it’s not a small impact.

But the truth about federal agriculture policy is that most of Washington’s attention, and the bulk of checks coming from the Treasury, are focused on a small swath of large farming and ranching businesses. Of the 2 million farms identified by the department of agriculture, fully 72 percent received exactly $0 in government payments in 2015. Of those receiving payments, just 15 percent of the largest farms captured almost 85 percent of the total payments.

Because the biggest subsidy programs tie support to specific crops, Congress’s nonpartisan research arm has found that since passage of the 2014 farm bill, six crops (corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice and peanuts) accumulated 94 percent of payments – all while only accounting for 28 percent of agricultural receipts. Growers of vegetables, tree nuts, fruits and most livestock receive nothing.

There are a number of challenges a federal farm bill could help tackle. This year was the largest Gulf of Mexico dead-zone on record. That happens when so much nitrogen fills the water it is depleted of oxygen to the point nothing can survive.

Agriculture is the number-one cause of this pollution. The agricultural phosphorous runoff-induced Lake Erie algae bloom has reared its head once again. Land prices continue to be very high, placing a barrier before new and beginning farmers. And rural communities continue to lag the overall economy in performance. The agriculture committees, however, have spent the year focusing on how to extract more money for favored producers such as cotton and dairy.

Committee members and lobbyists are upset that the subsidy programs created for these two commodities are less costly than originally anticipated, despite the fact this is due in large part because both of these segments of agriculture are projected to experience double-digit increases in income from the market. And the committees are taking advantage of much greater than anticipated savings in conservation and nutrition programs in an attempt to deflect focus from other commodity subsidy programs that are vastly more expensive than originally promised.