Congress increasingly appears inclined to perpetuate current agricultural benefit programs for another seven years. But now is the time, critics say, when it's most crucial that they be abolished.

Most politicians, when they speak of farm outlays, only refer to the direct cost of commodity programs - which has averaged roughly $12 billion over the past four years. But this greatly understates the farm policy burden on the U.S. Treasury and taxpayers.

• The Food for Peace program dumps U.S. food on foreign nations - sometimes upsetting their markets - and costs some $1 billion annually.

• Conservation payments to farmers cost almost $2 billion.

• Crop insurance programs cost $1 billion.

• More than $3 billion in subsidized and guaranteed loans to farmers - with $12 billion in defaults since 1989 - also cost taxpayers.

When all these programs are added together, the total cost to taxpayers is staggering:

• Direct subsidies alone cost $26.2 billion in 1994.

• Between 1986 and 1994, they cost taxpayers $254.6 billion.

• Federal farm policies cost American consumers an additional $11.1 billion in higher grocery prices, according to studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Since 1986, Americans as taxpayers and as consumers have probably shelled out some $370 billion more than they would have absent this host of interventionist agricultural policies.