They include members of Congress who vote on such payments. The EWG regularly publishes the names of wealthy and well-connected people who've received farm subsidies. "Our ask was, 'Help us get to the next year.' So I'm grateful for what has been done." "None of us expect to be made whole" from pandemic-related losses," says Leman. Leman's government aid was limited by the cap on payments to any single enterprise, and Leman says his farm still will lose money this year. Leman's farm received more than $700,000 in government payments in 2020, according to USDA data obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a long-time critic of many farm subsidies. "You would have seen significant fallout had there not been some assistance," he says. Chad Leman, co-owner of a large hog farm in central Illinois, says the federal aid kept some pork producers from going under. "I think there is a fundamental question: Why are we providing all this additional aid?" Glauber says.įarmers contacted by NPR had a variety of answers to that question. Up to three partners in any enterprise could collect that maximum amount.įinal figures aren't yet available, but based on previous years, it's likely that most of the money went to fewer than 100,000 farms. The more crops they grew, the more government money they got, up to a cap of $250,000 per person. They simply got paid based on their previous production of grain or pigs or cattle. The massive government payments turned it into the fifth-most profitable year since 1975.įarmers didn't have to prove that they needed help in order to qualify for subsidies. farm income in 2020 would have been about average, compared with the past 20 years, even without the emergency aid. "Commodity prices have come back up and actually are looking better than they've looked in several years," Glauber says. Yet as the flood of money continued through the summer and fall, most farmers' economic worries were receding. Department of Agriculture's chief economist, now a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "You almost lose track of how much money is going out," says Joseph Glauber, formerly the U.S. The $46 billion in direct government payments to farmers in 2020 broke the previous annual record by about $10 billion, even after accounting for inflation. The aid, delivered in two separate packages over the course of the year, went to a wide variety of people in agriculture, including corn and soybean farmers, cattle ranchers, and fruit and vegetable producers. In addition, farmers were able to tap billions of dollars in funding from the Paycheck Protection Program. Congress approved about $35 billion in emergency aid to farmers, which came on top of roughly $10 billion in traditional farm subsidies that were already in place.
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