News

Grassley: large farms shouldn’t get unlimited funds

A USDA report shows that federal commodity program payments have shifted to favor larger farms with higher incomes as farms continue to consolidate.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says although he’s not a fan of unlimited subsidies going to large farms, he has never tried to pass a law to limit the size of a farm. But, he says, something must be done.

“I do however strongly believe that at some point farms are big enough and shouldn’t continue to get unlimited federal dollars,” he said.

The USDA report found that in 1991, half of commodity program payments went to farms operated by households with incomes over $60,000. In 2015, half of the payments went to households with incomes over $146,000.

Grassley says he hopes to address this in the 2018 Farm Bill.

“I’m not going to give up until I get this limit put on what a single farm entity can get under all of these programs,” he says.

Grassley introduced a bill in 2011 to place caps on farm payments so that large farm operations couldn’t exploit payments. An amendment was passed in the Farm Bill that allowed payments to continue.

For more information on the report visit: https://www.ers.usda.gov/.