Original links are included though some may have expired.

GDP of Nicaragua, 2003: $3.6 billion
World sugar subsidies, 2003^*: $7 billion
^* OECD estimate

What They Mean:

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's tally of global of farm subsidies is about $320 billion a year. This figure, though, includes policies not always considered 'subsidies:' spending on agricultural research, conservation reserves, irrigation and pest control accounts for about $55 billion of the total, and money transferred through tariffs and quotas another $148 billion. The WTO's more limited definition of "trade-distorting" subsidies is about $125 billion annually. But either figure is pretty big. For context, $320 billion is a bit more than the currency-basis $310 billion GDP of all 48 sub-Saharan African countries combined, while $125 billion is about double the value of all foreign aid donations. Alternatively, $320 billion is about equal to the economies of mid-size states like Massachusetts and Georgia, and $125 billion is comparable to those of Louisiana, Iowa, or South Carolina.

Either way you count, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy accounts for the largest single chunk of this money. The EU's most recent subsidy "notification" to the WTO, covering the 2001/2002 marketing year (and therefore predating some policy changes) cites 39.3 billion euros in subsidy payouts across 54 commodities. The largest single subsidy was a 9.7 billion euro payment to the beef industry; the smallest, 600,000 euros to silkworm colony managers. Others include 4.4 billion euros to produce butter, 2.7 billion for olive oil, 1.9 billion for tomatoes, 900 million for wine, 543 million for pears, 535 million for cucumbers, and so on through barley, clementines, kumquats, tobacco, dried milk, apricots, artichokes, grapes, lentils, chick peas, hops, oats, and hemp. (Mutton does not appear on the EU notification list, but the OECD cites a large 'sheepmeat' subsidy.) Japan is second at $30 billion; the United States is third at about $18 billion; with Korea, Canada, Switzerland, and Norway following.

Heavily subsidized commodities include milk and butter, rice, sugar, cotton, and some others. OECD's research finds that dairy products get the most money, at $44 billion in 2003. Rice subsidies, in second place at $21 billion, are mainly an Asian phenomenon, with Japanese and Korean growers receiving about 90 percent of the money. Europe and the United States account for most of the $7 billion in sugar subsidies.

Further Reading:

Figures: The OECD provides a database with figures by country and by commodity:
http://www.oecd.org/document/58/0,2340,en_2649_
33775_32264698_1_1_1_1,00.html

OECD defends its $320 billion figure from criticism by Pascal Lamy:
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/
aid/1223/Farming_support:_the_truth.html

Sugar: Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter this week asserted that additional sugar imports from Central America and the Dominican Republic under the proposed 'CAFTA' agreement would "flood the U.S. market and devastate the Louisiana sugar industry as domestic sugar is displaced by highly subsidized foreign imports." Central America's sugar industry is not subsidized. At $1.2 billion annually, the U.S. sugar subsidy program is equal to nearly a third of Nicaraguan GDP. The United States uses 10 million tons of sugar a year, of which about 1.25 million metric tons is imported. (Before the sugar subsidy program's enlargement in the 1980s, the United States was importing about 3 million tons a year.) Should the CAFTA pass, the 0.3 million tons of annual sugar imports from the six countries involved would rise to 0.45 million, implying total import growth from 1.25 to 1.45 million.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on trade trends in sugar since the 1980s:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Sugar/trade.htm

Views on farm trade:

The WTO's agriculture page:
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/agric_e/negoti_e.htm

The Cairns Group -- 17 Pacific, Latin American, African, and Asian states call for eliminating subsidies:
http://www.cairnsgroup.org/

The United States -- farm trade proposals at the WTO:
http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/wto/

The EU on agriculture, including a poll with some noticeably leading questions -- "Do you agree that the Common Agricultural Policy helps ensure that farm animals are well treated?" -- a report on the 2003 reform, and a page for WTO negotiations:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/external/
wto/index_en.htm