Billionaires Edgar Bronfman Sr. and Leonard Lauder are among the New York City-based “farmers” who have received federal farm subsidies in the past several years, according to a new set of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Between 2003 and 2005, Mr. Bronfman received $17,455 in subsidies for his farm in Virginia’s Albemarle County, and Mr. Lauder received $3,015.58 between 2003 and 2004 through his share of an organic farm in Idaho, the data show. Mr. Lauder no longer owns shares of the farm and has stopped receiving subsidies, aides said. Messages left at Mr. Bronfman’s office were not returned.

Until last year, the names of Messrs. Bronfman and Lauder were concealed behind farming companies and other ownership structures, but on a new set of records the USDA connects each owner of a company to the subsidies they received. Officials at a public interest group, Environmental Working Group, made the records available on its Web site this morning.

“It shows that we have a farm subsidy program that doesn’t have much to do with keeping farmers on the land,” the president of the group, Ken Cook, said. “They’ve gotten the money from you and me in the name of saving family farms and it’s actually being used by big companies to gobble up the farms around them.”

There are about 385,000 recipients in the database who together received $9.8 billion in subsidies over the three-year period of 2003 to 2005.

Several New York residents took in more than $100,000 in subsidies, the records show. A SoHo resident, Phyllis A. Joyner, received $213,998.13. Ms. Joyner did not return calls for comment. Among the other top recipients are philanthropist brothers Mark Rockefeller, who was given $137,010, and David Rockefeller, who received $29,614.68 for his farm in Hudson, N.Y. Neither could be reached yesterday afternoon.

The data show that the subsidies were being distributed in a way that contradicted their original mission — to help family farms compete in a worldwide market, a spokesman for the nonprofit New York Farm Bureau, Peter Gregg, said

“It certainly is distressing to hear that fat cats are taking subsidies that are earmarked for our family farmers,” he said. “Without some sort of safety net, it would be difficult for our farms to stay in business in a high-cost state like New York.”

The state is ranked third in the country for dairy farming, Mr. Gregg said.

A human rights consultant living on the Upper West Side, Patricia Armstrong, received $31,730, according to the records. She said she inherited part of a farm in the Kearney County of Nebraska from her father’s estate several years ago and didn’t know exactly what she was receiving because the farm is split three ways with her siblings.

“The subsidy programs exist to support agriculture,” she said, adding that her family rents out the land to farmers.

Access to the new data comes as several lawmakers, led by Senator Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, are attempting to change the farm subsidy program. The bill responsible for the current subsidy structure expires September 30.

Mr. Lugar, who owns a 604-acre farm in his home state, in early May proposed the creation of “risk management accounts” to replace the subsidies. He estimated the plan would save the country an estimated $55 billion over 10 years by analyzing the needs of farmers before doling out subsidies.

A lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, Mary Kay Thatcher, defended the subsidies yesterday. “Larger subsidies reflect larger risks,” she told Bloomberg News.

The data could change the debate over farm subsidies because Americans will learn that billionaires and members of Congress are receiving tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies, a senior budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Brian Riedl, said.

Still, Mr. Luger’s bill “faces a severe uphill battle,” Mr. Riedl said. “The Agriculture Committee is virtually united against reform.”