Top Loopholes in House Farm Subsidy Bill

Farm subsidies already favor the largest farms. But the budget reconciliation bill the House will consider this week is packed with farm subsidy loopholes that would make the problem worse. 

These provisions could add tens of billions to the federal deficit and further tilt the playing field against small family farmers. 

Here are some of the worst farm subsidy loopholes and giveaways in the bill: 

• Increasing price guarantees. Only 40% of farms grow crops eligible for payments linked to reference prices, and the top 10% of those farms collected almost nearly three-quarter of all payments in 2023. But the budget bill would increase those price guarantees by 10% to 20% for all covered crops, in turn boosting subsidy payments, especially to the largest farms.
• Payments every year. Many people might think farm subsidies are designed to be paid only in time of need. But the bill would increase cotton, rice and peanut price guarantees so high that many farmers of these crops would receive a payment every year.
• Rice payments could triple. The bill would likely increase the average payment rice farmers get from $61 per acre to $175 per acre – an increase of 187% – even though rice growing profits remain high. Subsidies for cotton and peanuts would also increase dramatically.
• New corporate loopholes. The bill would increase payment limits from $125,000 to $155,000 per person, and would allow every member of a farm organized as a pass-through entity, including joint ventures, S corporations or limited liability corporations, to collect up to $155,000 a year each. This would eviscerate a long-standing income limit designed to prohibit millionaires from receiving disaster and conservation payments.
• More acres eligible for payments. The bill would also allow farmers who grow “covered commodities” like peanuts, rice and cotton to make 30 million additional acres of farmland eligible for subsidy payments – a 12% increase in the number of acres eligible for such payments.
• More subsidies for insurance companies. One out of every three dollars used to fund federal crop insurance already flows to crop insurance companies and insurance agents. And the bill would increase these subsidies by linking payments to inflation and charging taxpayers for additional company operating costs.
• More bailouts for factory farms. The bill would also increase disaster payments and insurance subsidies sent to farmers of livestock, dairy, poultry and even fish farms – even though disaster assistance and insurance payments have reached record levels. 

Relatively few farmers would benefit significantly from higher reference prices, and only around 20 percent of farms are even able to participate in the federal crop insurance program. More subsidies linked to reference prices and more subsidies to insurance companies and agents won’t help most farmers. 

In 2023, fewer than 200 farms received more than $10,000 each from one of the two main federal programs that use reference prices. The bottom 80% of program recipients received just $513 each, on average. 

The budget bill creates these loopholes and giveaways, even though net farm income is expected to increase in 2025 – thanks in part to lower production costs.