Source: NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COALITION, 12/21/17


A recent pair of reports from the Economic Research Service (ERS) confirms that federal subsidies to farms are increasingly going to larger and larger farms, thus supporting the cycle of the big getting bigger. Fewer and bigger farms mean less money circulating in local economies, fewer farm jobs in rural areas, and fewer opportunities for beginning and young farmers to get into the business. Since 1991, the household income threshold for farms receiving half of all commodity program payments more than doubled from about $60,000 to over $146,000. For crop insurance indemnities we see a similar shift. In 1997, half of crop insurance indemnities went to farms with incomes of over $63,000; today that number is $143,000.

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