The Farm Floor

The problem

American farm policy pays farmers when prices fall, when yields fail, when trade wars hit and when the weather turns, through a stack of programmes that together run $20 to $30 billion a year in a normal year and far more in a bad one. The case for it is that farming is the one business in which a competent operator can be ruined by a season, and a country should not let its farms fail for want of a floor. The case is sound. The programme is not built on it.

The money follows acres, not risk. The Environmental Working Group's database, assembled from the government's own records, found that in 2024 the top 10 percent of recipients collected 65 percent of commodity subsidies, and that over the previous five years the top tenth took $48 billion of $60 billion. Nearly 10,000 operations have received a payment in every one of the last forty years. About 80,000 residents of the country's largest metropolitan areas, who own farmland they do not farm, collected more than $2 billion between 2020 and 2024. And in 2025 Congress raised the limit on what one person may collect from $125,000 to $155,000, a limit that was already routinely multiplied by naming spouses, children and partners as "actively engaged" in the farm.

The floor the programme was meant to provide, for the family operation that one bad year would end, is the part that is thinnest. A mid-sized farm that does not grow a programme crop, a young farmer without a payment history, a vegetable grower, a rancher: these receive little or nothing, because the money is tied to what was grown on that land in the past. № 036 argued that rural counties deserve a floor of care and a share of what they host. This proposal is the farm's version: a floor under the operation, not a payment on the acre.

The proposal

The Farm Floor: a hard cap of $125,000 a year in total federal farm support per person, counting crop insurance premium subsidies, commodity payments and ad hoc aid together, with "actively engaged" defined as working the farm, and an adjusted-gross-income limit of $500,000. Every recipient published by name, annually, by the government. The savings fund a revenue floor for the first $1 million of any farm's production, open to every farm regardless of crop or history.

How it would work

1. One cap, all programmes. Today each programme has its own limit and crop insurance has none. Under the Floor, the cap of $125,000 per person applies to the sum of every federal farm benefit, including the taxpayer's share of a crop insurance premium, which averages about 60 percent of the premium and is the largest and least visible subsidy of all.

1. Actively engaged means working. A person counts toward the farm's cap only if they provide at least half their working time, or 1,000 hours a year, to the farm, and no farm may count more than three people. The paper partnerships that let one operation collect a dozen limits end.

1. The income test. No support to any person with adjusted gross income above $500,000, from any source. A farmer earning that much has a floor already.

1. Published, by the government. Every payment, every premium subsidy, every recipient, by name and county, in an annual public file. The Environmental Working Group has done this by lawsuit for thirty years. It is the government's job.

1. The floor. The savings, on the order of several billion dollars a year, fund a revenue floor open to any farm: a guarantee that the first $1 million of a farm's annual revenue will not fall more than 30 percent below its five-year average, whatever it grows, paid automatically from the farm's own tax filing. A vegetable farm, a dairy, a rancher and a first-generation grower with no payment history all qualify, because the floor is on the farm, not the crop.

1. Emergencies through the floor. Trade retaliation and disaster aid, which have been paid as ad hoc cheques in recent years at the largest scale of all, are paid through the floor and count toward the cap. An emergency is exactly when the floor should work, and exactly when the cap matters most.

The numbers

What the cap saves. If the top tenth of recipients collect 65 percent of commodity support, and a hard cap with a real engagement rule cuts their share by even a third, the saving is on the order of $3 to $5 billion a year in a normal year and much more in a bailout year. The crop insurance cap, applied to premium subsidies that today exceed $1 million for some operations, adds to it.

What the floor costs. A 30 percent revenue floor on the first $1 million of production, across roughly two million farms most of which never trigger it, is estimated in the low billions in a normal year, funded within the savings. In a catastrophic year it costs more, which is what a floor is for, and the Floor says so.

Who gains. About 90 percent of American farms have revenue under $1 million and most of them currently receive little. They are the floor's beneficiaries. The top 10 percent, who currently receive most of the money, receive a capped amount and a floor on their first million like everyone else.

The city recipients. $2 billion over five years to 80,000 people in metropolitan areas who own but do not work farmland. Under item 2, most of it ends.

The honest objections

"Large farms produce most of the food, so of course they get most of the support." They produce most of the food and they also have the most capital, the best access to credit and the greatest ability to survive a bad year, which is the opposite of the case for a subsidy. Support that follows output is a payment for being large. A floor that catches a farm before it fails is a payment for being in trouble, and it is the only kind of farm payment a country can justify to the people who do not farm.

"Caps just cause farms to split on paper." They have, for forty years, because "actively engaged" has meant signing a form. Item 2 defines it as hours, by person, with a limit of three per farm, and item 4 publishes the names so that a farm claiming twelve active partners is visible to its neighbours. No rule is proof against a determined lawyer. This one is proof against the current arrangement.

"Crop insurance is insurance, not a subsidy, and capping it drives farmers out of the pool." The taxpayer pays about 60 percent of every premium and the private insurers' administrative costs on top, which is a subsidy by any definition. The cap applies to the taxpayer's share, not to the farmer's right to buy coverage: a large farm may insure every acre and pay the unsubsidised premium on the acres above the cap, as any other business insures its risks.

"Publishing names is an invasion of farmers' privacy." A payment from the public is public. The information is already released under the Freedom of Information Act to whoever sues for it. Publishing it as a matter of course means the farmer sees it too, and can correct it.

"Trade retaliation aid was an emergency, and emergencies need speed." The floor is faster than an ad hoc cheque: it pays from the farm's own filing, automatically, when revenue falls below the line, without waiting for Congress or a Secretary's discretion. What it does not do is pay a farm with revenue of $20 million a cheque of $1 million because a tariff changed, which is what the ad hoc programmes did.

Sources

• Environmental Working Group, Farm Subsidy Database, subsidy concentration for commodity programmes and total subsidies, 2024 and 2020–2024; "Almost 10,000 farmers have received subsidies 40 straight years," May 2025; analysis of metropolitan recipients
• Public Law 119-21 (2025), farm programme provisions raising payment limits to $155,000
• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Risk Management Agency, crop insurance premium subsidy rates and programme cost
• Congressional Budget Office, baseline projections for farm programmes and crop insurance
• U.S. Government Accountability Office, Farm Programs: USDA Should Take Additional Steps to Ensure Compliance with Payment Limits and related reports on "actively engaged" rules
• Proposals № 036 (The Rural Compact); № 049 (The Insurer of Last Resort); № 079 (The Sugar Line)