Farm subsidy costs have exceeded projections made when the 2014 farm law was enacted, said the Environmental Working Group, urging Congress to reduce payments to the largest operators. “If Congress is serious about reducing the deficit, reducing farm subsidies to millionaires would be a good place to start,” said EWG analyst Anne Schechinger.
Updates to the EWG database, which influenced the 2002 farm law, found that a partnership in Charleston, Mo., collected more than $4 million in crop subsidies last year, apparently the largest recipient of commodity payments in the country in 2016. The median household income in the town in southeastern Missouri is $27,000, said EWG. The median household income for very large commercial farms is $1.1 million, according to USDA.
EWG pointed to proposals to cap the amount that can be collected in farm subsidies, to deny payments to large operations and to require USDA to release the names of subsidy recipients. There are payment limits at present but they can be easily circumvented.
The EWG farm subsidy database is available here.