In March, Congress authorized a multibillion-dollar bailout for farms and left the Agriculture Department to work out how the money would be spent. When the program was rolled out two months later, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said its $16 billion in direct payments would be a "lifeline" for farms of all sizes. But, according to an NBC News analysis of the first nearly 700,000 payments, totaling $5.6 billion, the program has favored large, industrialized farms over smaller, diversified ones, provided loopholes for corporate farms and sent sizable payments to foreign-owned operations. The uneven distribution of funds is stark. The top 10 percent of recipients got average payments of almost $95,000, while the bottom 10 percent averaged around $300. Almost 7,000 farms got less than $200, and nearly 200 got less than $20. | 
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