Don’t call it a budget reconciliation bill. Call it a “farm bill for the one-tenth of the 1%.”
That’s because the budget reconciliation bill the House passed today will make it easier for the wealthiest farmers to receive farm subsidies.
In particular, the bill increases the limit on farm subsidies for certain commodity crops from $125,000 to $155,000. Less than one-tenth of 1% of farms received more than $125,000 linked to government price guarantees in 2024, according to farm subsidy data provided by the Department of Agriculture. Only one-tenth of 1% received a payment greater than $125,000 in 2023, and only two-tenths of 1% received a payment greater than $125,000 in 2022.
Because farm subsidy payments are tied to production, only the largest and most successful farmers will benefit from the bill increasing the payment limit.
Consider Pennsylvania, part of which is represented by Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.), chairman of the Agriculture Committee. In 2024, no Pennsylvania farms came close to the current payment limit of $125,000. In 2023, only 113 farms received more than the limit – out of 49,000 in the state.
To help pay for bigger subsidies for the lucky few, the budget reconciliation bill makes the biggest cut ever to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
In other words, the bill dramatically reshapes policies in ways that make it easier for the richest people in farm country to collect farm subsidies and harder for poor people to eat.
New farm subsidy loopholes
Raising the $125,000 payment limit is not the only way the budget reconciliation bill creates new farm subsidy loopholes.
The bill also changes the definition of a “qualified pass through entity” to make it easier for the rich – including almost 80,000 people who live in cities, not on farms – to get farm subsidies.
Every member of a farm organized as a joint venture, S corporation or limited liability corporation could collect a farm subsidy payment up to $155,000 each. More than 200,000 farms are organized as corporate farms in this way, and there is no limit on the number of farm “members” who can collect payments.
The bill also hikes the price guarantee for the crops eligible for these subsidies by 10% to 20%. Farm subsidies are intended to go to farmers in their time of need, but the price guarantees in the budget bill soar so high that some farmers would receive a payment every year.
And the bill also allows farmers who grow “covered commodities” like peanuts, rice and cotton to make 30 million additional acres of farmland eligible for farm subsidy payments – a 12% increase in the number of acres eligible for such payments.
Bill’s biggest giveaway
The bill saves its biggest giveaway for the largest and most successful farmers, many of whom already enjoy more than $1 million in annual average household income.
The bill would eviscerate a long-standing income limit designed to prohibit millionaires from receiving disaster payments.
In combination, raising payments limits, allowing corporate shareholders to collect subsidies, increasing price guarantees, and weakening payment limits will increase the dependency the bill’s supporters routinely decry. Right now, almost 10,000 farmers have received a payment every year for the last 40 years.
Because this farm bill is for the “one-tenth of the 1%,” the number of people farming the U.S. Treasury, not just their fields, will grow faster than the cotton, rice and peanuts taxpayers are subsidizing.
