The latest agriculture spending bill passed by Congress continues sizeable payments to farmers to help them weather difficult economic times. Larger farms often operate as more than one business. In that case, each farm entity would receive a check. Caps on payments to each farm entity would come into play if a larger farm was a single business. About 41 percent of Sunflower County's residents still live below the poverty level.
Huge subsidies are nothing new.
Today, nearly half of U.S. farm income comes from federal taxpayers, according to a recent New York Times analysis using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But few people expect that to change any time soon. One fix may be to make crop insurance more attractive, farmer groups have suggested. This fall, the response from Congress was to ask taxpayers to pay more. The bill also would increase premium assistance for policies protecting against price and income loss to the same level of policies protecting against natural disasters.