A healthy agricultural sector needs plenty of sunlight. To that, our guest commentators this month would add that it also requires a bright light on farm subsidies. Jack Thurston and Nils Mulvad, the founders of Farmsubsidy.org, are two people who have helped foster greater transparency in agricultural subsidies by pressuring governments in the European Union to publish data on payments and recipients of farm subsidies. With the help of journalists and researchers, their deft and persistent use of so-called "Freedom of Information" laws has led to notable breakthroughs over a short time.

The efforts of Farmsubsidies.org, along with other similar initiatives in the EU and the United States, have done much to enlighten the debate on the role subsidies should play agricultural policy. Overall, however, the quality and availability of data on subsidies varies widely from country to country, while within countries information differs considerably depending on the economic sector and level of government. More often than not, quality data on government subsidies is sorely lacking. This is especially true in the services sector, as Pierre Sauvé notes in his introduction to subsidies and services. The complexity of the services sector goes some ways in explaining paucity of data, although a lack of political will is also to blame.

On the lighter side, we introduce a new feature in Subsidy Watch that we call Waffeloids, in which we highlight the contradictory, the absurd, or the plain wrong when it comes to comments on subsidies. This month we feature two recent quotes from Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures and one of the most vocal proponents of biofuels. Mr. Khosla is not always consistent, it seems, when he speaks on the topic of subsidies for biofuels.