I believe that the USDA is where a lot of the government spending on pork projects goes. The same is true for a lot of departments including the Department of Transportation and The Department of Education. I believe that this is pretty much the way our government runs things.
I've always had a problem with the way our government is making select groups wealthy off our taxpayer dollars. The peanut farmer is a good example. The government is making many of them multi-millionaires (via the USDA). The government subsudizes certain groups that I don't consider vital to our national security or our ecomony. Why does our government subsudize peanut farmers that don't create many jobs? Why not subsudize other industries such as the petroleum industry that would create a lot of jobs and get entire regions of the country out of an economic slump?
Do you remember that the people of Afghanistan didn't know what to do with all the peanut butter we sent them? The government has to try to do something with all the peanuts it has bought. An incredible amout of taxpayers dollars are wasted on special interest groups and much of it is funneled through the USDA.