Why the 2023 U.S. Farm Bill Matters to All of Us

Nothing has a greater impact on food policy and our food system than the U.S. Farm Bill. It directly determines what we grow and eat. 

The U.S. Farm Bill, or more aptly named the food & farm bill, is a critical package of legislation that passes every five years and determines how nearly $1 trillion in tax dollars will be spent on our agricultural and food system. It greatly impacts what is grown, how it is grown, the livelihood of farmers and ranchers, and the funding that goes into nutrition assistance programs. It also directly and indirectly incentives agricultural practices and research, dictates the level of USDA support farmers and ranchers receive, and prioritizes the design of our food, trade, and agricultural systems. Every five years the farm bill expires and must be updated through an extensive process where it is proposed, debated, and passed by Congress and is then signed into law by the President.

The upcoming farm bill (FY2024-FY2028) is estimated to cost over $700 billion and consists of about a dozen sections (or titles). Four titles accounted for 99% of the 2018 farm bill’s mandatory spending and will likely continue to shape the 2023 Farm Bill. These four primary titles are:  

  • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits

  • Subsidy payments for commodity farmers

  • Crop insurance

  • Conservation programs

This year the next farm bill is being decided on, and it is crucial that we voice how we want it to be designed. Few pieces of legislation are more significant than the farm bill when it comes to dictating how our food system is structured and operates, and who benefits from it—and who doesn’t. 

How the Current Farm Bill Favors Four Commodities, Industrial Agriculture & Corporations

The farm bill is often described as a way to keep food prices fair for farmers and consumers, ensure an adequate food supply, and protect the country's vital natural resources. However, when examined as a whole, the farm bill functions more to support a handful of commodities– creating profits for industrial agriculture and corporations– rather than ensuring equitable food policy and ecosystem resiliency.

Programs and assistance available to farmers and ranchers through the farm bill include commodity programs, crop insurance, conservation programs, farm loans, and disaster assistance. While this may seem like a comprehensive list of resources available to all food producers, the reality is that the farm bill has traditionally favored a select group of agricultural producers (those receiving the majority of resources) over others.

Commodity Programs & Crop Insurance 

Commodity Programs are one of the more straightforward programs in the farm bill. The programs are structured in a way that when the price of one of the handful of eligible commodity crops—such as corn, soy, wheat, and cotton—fall below a certain threshold, farmers receive a payment based on a formula. Commodity programs receive 7% of farm bill funding and are only open to a select group of eligible crops. Average commodity payments are in the tens of thousands of dollars, and some farms receive these payments continuously for decades. A recent EWG analysis found that out of the two million US farms, only 20,000 corporate farm entities are receiving a large chunk of commodity program funds. This subset of farms have each received tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded federal farm program subsidies for 37 consecutive years. 

Federal Crop Insurance is an important component of the "farm safety net," providing coverage for more than 80% of U.S. farmland. The Federal Crop Insurance Program was first developed in 1938 to provide coverage when extreme weather prevents or affects planting but was not used by most farmers until the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 made it possible for farmers to subsidize the cost of insurance policies. As with other types of insurance, farmers pay a premium for coverage on their eligible crops and can file a claim when they suffer a loss due to unforeseeable circumstances like flooding, hail, or drought. Initially, farmers were asked to cover the full costs of the premiums but due to low crop insurance participation rates (due to high costs to the farmer), the Risk Management Agency (RMA) was created in the USDA in 1996 to administer the crop insurance program. Through subsidies built into the new program guidelines, participation increased dramatically.

Current farm bill commodity and crop insurance programs heavily favor large, industrial-scale agriculture and the overproduction of commodity crops such as corn and soybeans. Over 85% of crop insurance payments go to only four commodities: corn, soy, wheat, and cotton. Nearly 40% of corn and more than 70% of soybeans are turned into “cheap” feed for animals raised in industrialized, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are controlled by four main meat packers: Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef. Decades of corporate-controlled farm policy and feed subsidies have been key to the rise of meat consolidation in the U.S.

This farm bill funding props up corporate profits while driving small farms out of business and supporting environmentally destructive and inhumane factory farming operations (CAFOs). The top 10% of farms, as measured by farm sales, receive more than 60% of all farm bill subsidies. Additionally, the 2018 farm bill created new subsidy loopholes that allowed payments to cousins, nieces, and nephews of farmers—regardless of where they live or work.

Not only do these subsidies favor a select group of agricultural producers, these programs also carry a hefty price tag for taxpayers. Eligible commodity farmers received over $143.5 billion in federal crop insurance payments from 1995 through 2020. These payments are in addition to $103.5 billion in subsidies that went toward farmers’ crop insurance premiums. USDA pays an average of 62% of farmers’ premium subsidies and spends $1.3 billion a year on payments to insurance companies and agents that sell policies to farmers. Crop insurance has changed from a program originally created to compensate small family farms for weather-caused crop losses to now serving as a guaranteed source of farm income and having taxpayers cover the costs that large farming corporations can easily afford to pay without taxpayer money. 

The current federal crop insurance program also works to disincentive farmers from growing a diversity of crops. Farms that grow anything aside from corn and soybeans are often not protected, and so they carry the loss on every acre. Small, beginning, organic, diversified, and specialty crop farmers seldom purchase crop insurance due to the lack of available funding, technical assistance support, an overly burdensome enrollment process, and program administrators who are unfamiliar with unconventional ag practices. Only a fraction of the overall farm bill funding goes to fruit and vegetable growers, small & diversified farms, and pastured livestock operations.  

As climate challenges worsen, the cost of crop insurance programs will continue to increase. Rather than incentivizing producers to implement agricultural practices that will make agriculture more resilient – like improving soil health and increasing diversity on the farm – these subsidies often pay farmers for the same type of crop loss year over year. The subsidies work to uphold the status quo of industrial agriculture practices and growing the same commodities, like corn and soy. Some crop insurance restrictions even discourage the adoption of certain conservation practices by rewarding risky farming practices, including cultivating marginal land especially prone to drought or flooding. 

Conservation Programs 

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) has been around since 1996 and is a cost-share conservation program that was originally designed to help improve water quality, increase soil health, create wildlife habitat, and mitigate against drought and weather volatility. But, a recent study has shown, the program has veered from these goals over the years. 

Researchers analyzed farm projects that received EQIP funding between 2009 and 2018 and reported that those with the highest potential to improve soil and environmental health represented between only 2% to 27% of the total dollars spent. Additionally, they reviewed $7 billion in government spending over the 10-year period and found that soil-enhancing practices received a very small sliver of the pie. In 2018, for instance, soil-enhancing practices represented less than 1% of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) total annual expenditures. The study results also showed that half of the EQIP funding had no relation to soil health, and some practices funded by EQIP were even considered counterproductive to soil health

Between 2009 and 2018, over 384,000 farmers and ranchers received EQIP contracts to support conservation efforts on more than 115 million acres. In 2018 alone, over $1.87 billion in financial and technical assistance went to assisting 42,800 EQIP contracts involving more than 13.6 million acres of agricultural land. But, of the top 10 practices being funded—including water storage facilities, irrigation systems, fencing, or livestock pipelines— six were related to building or improving structures and facilities and not directly related to building soil health or conservation practices—the original intention of the EQIP program.

In addition to straying from the program’s original goals, EQIP is now paying for polluters to pollute “less” instead of incentivizing better agriculture operations and practices. The original EQIP framework capped projects up to $50,000 over a five-year period and was not open to CAFO operations. However, the 2002 Farm Bill increased payment caps to $450,000 over five years, reserved 60% of EQIP funding for livestock practice (to include costs of waste facilities), and opened up massive funding to CAFO operations. More money is going to support CAFOs now than smaller farms received a decade ago. EQIP also pays for damaging industrial ag practices that disrupt and pollute natural waterways and incentivizes farmers to keep livestock out of pasture and in unhealthy, inhumane CAFO operations. 

Rather than having taxpayer-funded programs like EQIP merely mitigate the harmful environmental impacts of industrial agriculture, these conservation programs can be improved to incentivize and help farmers implement adaptive conservation practices and livestock operations like pasture grazing as opposed to waste management.

Farm Loans

Access to capital is critical for farmers and ranchers. Farm Service Agency (FSA) loans are a crucial source of financing for producers, particularly new, underserved, and BIPOC farmers who themselves face unique barriers to obtaining a farm loan from private lenders. However, documented decades of discriminatory USDA practices have denied them access to low-interest rate loans, loan servicing, and technical assistance, causing them hundreds of millions of dollars in economic loss and land loss through foreclosures. Additionally, credit access is so difficult for Native producers that many tribal reservations are referred to as “credit deserts.” On average, Native producers carry more debt at higher and often at predatory loan rates than other producers. Current farm loan programs lack innovative and equitable loan structuring measures that are needed to support a diverse range of agricultural producers.

Nutrition Assistance Programs

The farm bill focuses on food and nutrition security through multiple federal nutrition assistance programs, including the largest one– Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP benefits are used to supplement the food budget of low and no income families and allows them to purchase food at many places. 

Although farm bills have historically focused on supporting farm commodities, they have since become increasingly expansive in nature—particularly when the nutrition title was first included in 1973. Food assistance programs receive the largest portion of the farm bill and are increasing. In the 2023 projection, these nutrition assistance programs are 85% of the farm bill baseline, compared to about 76% when the 2018 Farm Bill was enacted, and 67% in the 2008 Farm Bill. Sharp increases in the nutrition assistance title reflect pandemic assistance and administrative adjustments made to SNAP benefit calculations. 

While support is needed to address nutrition security and increase access to healthy foods for families, a focused approach on bolstering nutrition programs can have unintended consequences. Instead of applying funding to address the root causes that lead people to apply for nutrition assistance programs – such as lack of livable wages, affordable housing, and having localized food systems that directly feed people – increasing funding to nutrition assistance programs only strengthen the band-aid “solution.” These programs, while initially well intentioned, enable a system that perpetuates poverty for some, and wealth for others. These band-aid approaches also prevent us from addressing the structural issues that lead to people having to apply for these assistance programs in the first place.

“With the largest endowment of any university at around $50 billion under management, Harvard’s “solution” to avoid having to pay livable wages to their workers is for them to apply for government-funded food assistance programs. ”

Harvard recently encouraged its graduate student workers to apply for nutrition assistance programs to supplement the unlivable wages it pays them. Despite being one of the richest academic institutions in the world, with the largest endowment of any university at around $50 billion under management, their “solution” to avoid having to pay livable wages to their workers is for them to apply for government-funded food assistance programs. Rather than working to help families “move toward self-sufficiency” as the SNAP website states, these assistance programs are preventing structural changes that are needed to provide workers a livable wage. 

Additionally, nutrition assistance programs help to perpetuate a food system that produces highly-processed foods that can be purchased through food nutrition assistance programs authorized in the farm bill. The largest portion of farm bill money is helping to support corporate industries that profit from nutrition assistance programs. Large corporations, such as Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, and the grocery chain Kroger, lobby heavily for food stamps—an indication of how much they rely on the money coming from these programs. These same Big Food companies also lobby heavily to influence the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which shape nutrition assistance programs like SNAP and play an enormous role in impacting the bottom lines of many of the nation’s large food companies. Big Food corporations rely on government assistance programs to keep their profits strong. Poverty is big business. 

These nutrition assistance programs have more infrastructure support than other government-funded localized food systems; and corporate agriculture benefits from it more than local food producers. More funding into these programs ultimately means more individuals and families become reliant on these government assistance programs, while enriching the profits of large corporations. Also, increasing funding toward these food assistance programs results in less funding for small-scale farmers and ranchers and other important agriculture programs that can help build localized infrastructure, enabling communities to directly feed their residents healthy and affordable food.

The farm bill should work to address the underlying root cause that we do not have an accessible localized food system. Failing to design the costly farm bill with this approach misses an opportunity to address the underlying issues of why food assistance program funding keeps increasing. 

What Should the Next U.S. Farm Bill Look Like?

While increased funding has come from the pandemic, the Infrastructure Reduction Act, and recent climate bills to strengthen local and regional agriculture, they are often in the forms of grants and temporary funding. The next farm bill needs to codify the transformation that is needed to support more local and regional producers, smaller and diverse farms, and incentivize the transition from destructive industrial agriculture to regenerative, Indigenous, and adaptive agriculture. Continued reliance on a fragile, globalized food system that wastes up to 40% of the food produced, abuses farmworkers, relies on only 12 plants and five livestock, and makes us sick from processed food is not sustainable—we should not have a farm bill that props it up.

 Farm bill programs, such as commodity programs, crop insurance, and conservation programs, need to support local producers in order to develop resilient, localized food systems. We must shift the focus away from corporate and industrial agriculture incentives and, instead, commit to developing local food economies. This empowers communities to cultivate foodsheds and potentially become less reliant on food assistance programs, creates a strong agriculture workforce, builds viable livelihoods, and strengthens local economic power. 

Also as climate challenges intensify, it is crucial that the next farm bill incentivizes agricultural practices that build soil health and farm resiliency. This would offer more return on investment for the billions we spend every year– in the form of healthy soil, stable food supplies, access to healthy food for people, and better livelihoods for producers, farmworkers, and rural communities.

Several organizations have created 2023 Farm Bill recommendations that outline proposed changes to the farm bill that support adaptive and regenerative farming practices, soil health, Native and Indigenous communities, and the health of agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and rural communities. Some of these include:

What Can We Do Now?

Although the U.S. Farm Bill affects every American, many Americans may not be familiar with it and realize they have a voice in how it is shaped. In Congress, many lawmakers are new to this piece of legislation as nearly half of them were elected since the passing of the last farm bill in 2018.  

Now more than ever, it has become increasingly important to advocate for a farm bill that directly supports small and medium size producers, agricultural products and practices that will regenerate soil and land, build resilient localized food systems, uphold farmworkers’ health and livelihoods, and directly feed our communities nutrient-dense food. 

As part of the process of reauthorizing the next farm bill, Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate are holding hearings, negotiating, and writing drafts of the bill that will eventually be reconciled into one bill. Let your voices be heard! Here are several ways you can get involved:

  • Sign (and share!) the Regenerate American Petition here for the 2023 Farm Bill to Support Healthy Soil & Regenerative Agriculture 

  • Submit your input here to the Farm Bill Committees:

    • House Agriculture Committee here

    • Senate Agriculture Committee here  

  • Follow the Federal Soil Health Bill tracker here

  • Share this blog with friends and family

If there is a time to implement transformational policy change, it is now. It is time to change the U.S. Farm Bill to support small, diversified farms instead of upholding the status quo of industrial agriculture controlled by corporations. Prioritize communities over commodities. And, planetary and human health over profits. 

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