Farmers, though a small proportion of the population, can impose a large total cost to taxpayers in the form of agricultural subsidies because the average cost imposed on each individual taxpayer is small and not given much attention by a large number of taxpayers.

This phenomenon is known as the "concentrated benefits and diffused costs" theory in political economics, where a small, organized group (like farmers) benefits significantly from policies like subsidies, while the cost is spread thinly across a large, unorganized group (the taxpayers), making the per-person cost small and less noticeable, thus reducing opposition to the subsidies.