Crop insurance
The indemnity data in this analysis come from the USDA’s Risk Management Agency’s Summary of Business Data Files, which are also included in EWG’s Crop Insurance Database.
EWG analyzed crop insurance indemnities between crop years 2020 and 2024 for all U.S. counties. The crop year is usually the year when the crop is harvested. For instance, crop insurance payments for crop year 2021 were made for harvests in calendar year 2021. We analyzed crop insurance indemnities at a county level and summed county level payments up to the state and national levels as well.
Farm subsidy programs
The two traditional commodity farm subsidy programs, ARC and PLC, were established in the 2014 Farm Bill and pay farmers for declines in crop prices or revenues. Farmers must choose to participate in either one or the other. ARC pays out when farm revenues drop below set revenue guarantees. PLC payouts are triggered if the crop price drops below a floor called the reference price, set by Congress.
MFP was created by the Trump administration and paid billions to farmers for losses driven by tariffs placed by China on agricultural imports from the U.S. in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s first-term trade war. MFP paid farmers in 2018 and 2019 for lower crop prices triggered by the trade war. Most MFP payments were made in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The Trump administration announced CFAP in April 2020, and payments continued under the Biden administration. The goal was to pay farmers “where prices and market supply chains have been impacted” by the Covid-19 pandemic. The program kept sending billions of dollars to farmers, even when crop prices started to go up at the end of 2020 and throughout 2021. Most CFAP payments were made in 2020 and 2021.
The ARC, PLC, MFP and CFAP subsidy data come from payment files belonging to the USDA Farm Service Agency’s payment files and are included in EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database. We also analyzed this data for all U.S. counties between 2020 and 2024. We provided the payments in this analysis by the year they are listed on the agency website, which is when the payment was made. But the payments may have been made for other years yet paid out in a different year, as with CFAP payments for 2020 that were paid out in 2021.
The farm subsidy data are provided by the Farm Service Agency at a recipient level. EWG summarized payments up to the county level to analyze which counties received farm subsidies each year between 2020 and 2024.
