Five Ad Hoc Farm Payment Programs Total $105 Billion Over Eight Years

By Grace Kim

Five ad hoc federal payment programs have funneled $105 billion to farmers over the past eight years without producing a new farm bill, and the money has largely flowed through farm balance sheets back to input suppliers and landowners. That is the core argument farm journalist Holly Spangler lays out in a new Farm Progress column arguing the sector needs a farmer-driven alternative to the current payment system.

The itemized programs Spangler tracks:

• $23 billion in 2018 Market Facilitation Payments, covering losses from the first trade war
• $31 billion in 2021 for COVID-19 losses
• $31 billion in the 2024 American Relief Act
• $12 billion in 2026 bridge payments
• $8 billion in Harvest Fuel Relief

Congress last passed a farm bill eight years ago. In its absence, Spangler writes, lawmakers have substituted ad hoc disaster payments — "which are definitely for policy disasters, not weather disasters" — for actual legislation, a cycle she attributes to partisan gridlock in Washington.

Where does the money end up?

Spangler's charge is blunt: payments roll out, farmers collect them, but input prices stay high and cash rents rise, so the funds pass through operators to the companies that lobby on K Street. The farmer, she writes, "is still just as bad off," while the lobbying firms' clients do well.

She calls the system fundamentally broken because it favors a narrow slice of operators — those large enough to function as pass-through entities — and because the "save the farmer" message has become a reusable lever for companies and organizations pressing Congress and USDA for more money.

How tight are small-operator margins?

University of Illinois agricultural economists do not expect 2027 net farm income to improve, according to the column. Revenue will come in slightly higher, but costs will rise by more than slightly. Whether an operator rents or owns ground changes the math; neither version of the math is easy.

Spangler anchors the piece in a quoted complaint from an Illinois small operator:

"I'm a small farmer, and I'm tired of listening to big corporate operators complain that they're not making money. They say margins are tight. They say the numbers don't work. What they don't say is that they're the ones driving a lot of those problems."

She notes the view is contested — a dozen farmers would agree, a dozen would not, and economists would call it complicated. Scale carries real advantages in a high-cost period: volume discounts on seed, fertilizer and chemicals, and multi-unit equipment discounts from machinery makers. Those economics explain why farmers have historically banded together into cooperatives and buying groups, with mixed results.

On what counts as too big, she quotes one farmer's definition: "Anybody bigger than me."

What happened to the young renter?

The column's sharpest margin example concerns a young farmer Spangler spoke with this fall. He has rented several hundred acres for a few years and built up the soil. The landowner died, and the heirs hired a farm manager who wants cash rent raised 25%. If the tenant agrees, he loses $100,000 a year. If he refuses, another operator will pay — likely one who can average the loss across several thousand other acres.

"We're all cooked," the young farmer told her. "We want to farm but we don't want to be at the complete mercy of the bank and our landlords."

Not every operator wants more ground. Spangler reports seasoned farmers turning down additional acreage because they already have more than enough work; they want to run a tractor, not manage widgets from an office. The trend she describes pushes farms larger, moves land wealth out of rural communities, pushes young farmers into other jobs, and drains people from production agriculture.

Federal farm policy has encouraged that consolidation, she writes, because payment structures favor larger operations operating across multiple entities, while Washington lobbyists drive most policy conversations and the decisions that follow.

What is the alternative?

Spangler's prescription is farmer-built rather than Washington-built. With the federal government unable to pass a farm bill three years past its due date and uninterested in sweeping change, she argues producers should raise food on the land they have for the buyers who want it — neighbors rather than export barges.

The young renter is considering a direct-to-consumer crop. Spangler notes that imported ground beef the federal government procured boosted demand for local beef like his.

Her closing message to readers: "Help isn't on the way. We are the help, and we need to choose our own path and drive our own change — or we may find ourselves on a road we don't like." She invites reader responses by email at [email protected].

Whether direct-to-consumer and community-based models can offset a 25% rent demand and a $100,000 projected loss is the question the column leaves open for the operators now weighing it.