For decades, the Department of Agriculture sent a total of over $10 billion in repeat payments to farmers, according to a new EWG analysis. Every year, for 40 years, the money went to nearly 10,000 farmers in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies or disaster relief.
Farmers may receive farm subsidies or disaster payments, even if they have collected a payment for each of those 40 years. Some members of Congress want to use the farm bill debate to increase these payouts for a select few farmers, while putting a ceiling on assistance for those who most need it – recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as SNAP. More than half of all SNAP recipients leave the program after just a single year of assistance.
USDA data show a total of 9,526 recipients got farm subsidy payments every year between 1985 and 2024. The average amount collected annually, $28,000 per year over the 40-year period, totals $10.7 billion. The top 10 repeat farm subsidy recipients collected between $9 million and $19 million each during this period.
Table 1. The 10 largest recipients of consecutive federal farm payments annually between 1985 to 2024.
| Recipient | Location | Subsidy total from 1985 to 2024 |
| Frische Brothers | Dumas, Texas | $19,229,736 |
| Molitor Brothers | Cannon Falls, Minn. | $18,888,936 |
| D.L. Robey Farms | Adairville, Ky. | $18,511,277 |
| Fann Farms | Salemburg, N.C. | $13,377,537 |
| Four Oaks Farms | Morganza, La. | $13,309,957 |
| VIP Farms | Thatcher, Ariz. | $11,006,086 |
| Wiggins Farm | Andalusia, Ala. | $10,025,799 |
| Kohler Farms Partnership | Valley City, N.D. | $9,862,949 |
| Adams Farms | Combes, Texas | $9,798,044 |
| Marien Farms | Alexandria, La. | $9,015,148 |
Source: EWG, from USDA data
Some subsidy recipients who received payments for 40 consecutive years neither work nor live on a farm, EWG found. In fact, 44 of the 9,526 repeat payment recipients live in some of the nation’s largest cities, despite a requirement that farm subsidy recipients be “actively engaged in farming.”
Between 1985 and 2024, farm subsidy programs paid farmers when crop prices fell below price guarantees set in the farm bill or when crop revenues fell below averages. Between 1996 and 2014, farmers also received “direct” subsidy payments linked to historic crop production. Disaster relief has been paid through annual spending bills and both temporary and permanent disaster programs.
EWG did not obtain data on subsidies before 1985. Farmers are also eligible for crop insurance premium subsidies, but federal law prevents the USDA from disclosing information about individual crop insurance subsidy recipients.
Budget bill increases dependence on farm subsidies
The budget reconciliation bill that the House will consider this week is filled with farm subsidy loopholes and other provisions that will increase farmers’ dependence on federal subsidies.
Only 40 percent of farms grow crops eligible for payments linked to reference prices, and the top 10 percent of those farmers collected nearly three-quarter of all payments. But the bill would increase the prices guaranteed to those farmers by 10% up to 20%. As a result, more farmers – not fewer – will become dependent on subsidies.
The bill would increase price guarantees so much that most cotton, rice and peanut farmers would receive a payment every year. And the bill could raise the average payment rice farmers get from $61 per acre to $175 per acre – a 187 percentage increase – even though rice growing profits remain high.
Subsidies for cotton and peanuts could also increase dramatically – by 153 percentage for seed cotton, and by 114 percentage for peanuts.
Three sections of the bill would increase payment limits, from $125,000 to $155,000 per person, allow every member of a farm organized as a joint venture or LLC to collect up to $155,000 a year, and eviscerate an income limit designed to prohibit millionaires from receiving farm subsidies.
The bill would also allow farmers who grow “covered commodities” like peanuts, rice and cotton to collectively add 30 million additional acres of farmland to qualify for farm subsidy payments – a 11 percent increase in the number of acres eligible for such payments.
