Budget Bill Expands Subsidies for Largest Farms, Cuts SNAP

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Congress met President Trump’s goal to pass a major budget bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill, before July 4. Republican lawmakers used the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill on a party-line vote, just as Democrats did in 2022 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. The new budget package extends tax cuts to wealthy individuals and businesses while cutting core government safety net programs, including Medicare and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This general theme of more money for the rich and fewer resources for the poor holds true for the bill’s changes to farm policy.

Just as Republicans cut benefits and added work requirements for SNAP, they made it easier for the largest, richest farmers and their family members to collect more federal subsidies. More subsidies for the largest farms could fuel farm consolidation.

“There is a hypocrisy there, about applying these limits and work requirements elsewhere, but explicitly expanding the loopholes and exceptions when it applies to farm subsidies,” says Billy Hackett, policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Congress typically passes a Farm Bill every four to five years, which sets federal food and farm policies, including the SNAP program, crop subsidies, conservation programs, and agriculture research. Congress has been trying to pass a new Farm Bill since the fall of 2023 without success. In a controversial move, Republicans reauthorized much of the outstanding Farm Bill through the Big Beautiful Bill, which helped them push through policies that couldn’t pass in a bipartisan process last year, including raising the payment limits on crop subsidies.

On paper, only farmers who are actively engaged in farm work or management can receive federal farm payments, and each farmer cannot receive more than $125,000 in payments annually. In practice, farm owners get around this limit because spouses, children, grandparents, even nieces, nephews, and cousins can each qualify for payments up to that limit. These family members can receive farm payments without ever stepping foot on the farm since a 2020 rule exempted all family farms from proving that payment recipients are “actively engaged” in the farm; most U.S. farms, roughly 97%, are family-run farms.

The Environmental Working Group estimates that between 2019 and 2023, 80,000 people living in large cities collected a combined $2.3 billion in farm subsidies. Foreign farm owners can also collect U.S. subsidies.

The Big Beautiful Bill further expands this loophole. It raises the per-person farm payment limit to $155,000 and, for the first time, empowers the Secretary of Agriculture to increase that limit annually based on inflation. It also allows pass through entities such as LLCs, S corporations, and joint ventures to qualify as farm members and receive subsidies, which could allow more absentee owners to receive direct payments. Finally, it makes more wealthy farms eligible for subsidies. Previously, farm households with an annual gross income above $900,000 could not qualify for subsidies, affecting an estimated 2% of farm households, according to the Farm Bureau. Under the Big Beautiful Bill, some of these farms will now be able to receive subsidies if 75% of their income comes from farming.

As the budget bill made its way through the Senate, Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman reportedly dissuaded Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley from introducing an amendment that would have kept payment limits at $125,000 per person and strengthened the requirement for recipients to be actively engaged in farming. Grassley’s office said this would have saved an estimated $5 billion.  

On June 29, dozens of agriculture trade groups, including the Farm Bureau and Corn Growers Association, sent a letter to Senate leadership urging them to oppose Grassley’s anticipated amendment.

Most federal farm payments already go to the largest farms. Higher and looser limits will only make this worse. In 2024, the top 10% of farm subsidy recipients collected 65% of all commodity subsidies and the top 1% received 23%. The average payment per person for the top 1% was near the limit at over $108,000, whereas the bottom 80% of all other commodity subsidy recipients received on average $1,180 per person, nearly 100 times less.

The largest crop subsidy programs only cover 19 specific crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, and rice. In 2022, only 40% of U.S. farms grew commodities that were eligible for these subsidies, and in 2023, only 27% of all U.S. farm acres were enrolled. Some young commodity farmers cannot qualify for these subsidies, even if they grow eligible crops, because they cannot meet the historic “base acres” requirement. Meanwhile, fruit and vegetable farmers do not qualify for most subsidies at all.

More subsidies for the largest commodity crop farmers will drive farm consolidation and raise land prices, hurting smaller farms and young farmers.

“When you see the concentration of resources in the hands of so few farmers, you see fewer farms able to compete, you see fewer farms in rural communities, and you see bigger farms buying up their neighbors’ land. You see land prices reflect the rising value of farm subsidies and price out small farmers or would be farmers,” says Hackett. “It together creates the perfect storm that perpetuates this historic priority of USDA, encouraging farmers to get big or get out.”

As payments for the richest farms increase, agricultural research, conservation programs, and most dramatically, low-income food assistance will all lose funding. Democrats opposed and blocked the 2024 House Farm Bill, which would have cut $20 billion from SNAP. By using the reconciliation process, Republicans passed a party-line budget package that reduces nutrition funding by $186 billion between 2025 and 2034.

The bill puts more work requirements on SNAP benefits and forces states to pay for a portion of their SNAP benefits based on their rate of erroneous payments. The Urban Institute estimates that 22.3 million families will lose some of their benefits, with 5.3 million families losing an average of $146 per month. Analysis of the House version of the bill estimated that work requirements would prevent 3.2 million people from receiving benefits at all.

A larger percentage of rural families use SNAP than urban families, which means that rural grocery stores in counties with high SNAP participation rates will take a financial hit when their shoppers have less to spend. Farmers will also lose out, as USDA estimates that a $1 billion investment in SNAP benefits generates $32 million in agriculture industry income and an additional 480 full-time agricultural jobs.

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