Source: ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP, 11/19/18

Farm bailout payments intended to offset the impacts of President Trump’s trade war have instead flowed to more than 1,000 “city slickers” who live in the nation’s largest cities, an EWG analysis of Department of Agriculture data shows. The payments detailed in the data released to EWG through a Freedom of Information Act request represent only a tiny fraction of the almost $5 billion in payments expected to come.

EWG found that 1,142 “farmers” in the nation’s 50 largest cities have received bailout payments so far. That includes nine residents of San Francisco, four residents of Los Angeles, five residents of New York City and four residents of Washington, D.C.
EWG also found 85 bailout recipients who collected more than $125,000, including one bailout recipient in Louisiana who received $439,120. The USDA established a $125,000 payment limit when the program was announced.

The data provided to EWG only covers 87,704 payments made through Oct. 31 from USDA’s Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, totaling $356 million. That amount is less than half of the $840 million that Reuters reported USDA has provided in bailout payments to farmers. That’s less than eight percent of the payments expected in the first round, and a second round of payments could provide another $4.7 billion to the same recipients.

The largest bailout recipient reported to EWG was Red Gum Planting Company, a soybean farm in Ferriday, La. Two farms operating under the names Red Gum Planting Company and Red Gum Planting Company Number 2 have already received $6 million between 1995 and 2017, according to USDA data published through EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database.

What’s more, Red Gum Planting Company and other bailout recipients remain eligible to receive commodity subsidies, crop insurance subsidies, and other forms of federal assistance in the rest of this year and beyond.

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