According to new government spending projections released
by the Congressional Budget Office, spending on farm subsidies will soar in the
next three years.
Subsidies in the 2014 Farm Bill will cost a lot more than initially projected, according to the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group opposed to farm subsidies.
Although Congress eliminated direct payments to farmers a
few years ago, they replaced them with two subsidy programs known as
Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC County) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC). The 2014 Farm Bill authorized both programs. The Congressional Budget Office
believed this change would save taxpayers billions of dollars over the life of
the Farm Bill.
However, the Environmental Working Group’s analysis of the CBO's projections contends that
government payments for the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage
subsidies will cost an additional $8 billion over the next three years -- 70 percent more than originally estimated by CBO when Congress passed the Farm
Bill in January 2014.
Similarly, Agriculture.com’s farm subsidy analysis finds that the
government faces three high-cost years, beginning with $5.8
billion in 2016. Low commodity prices will likely increase the cost of
programs that help stabilize crop revenue. Furthermore, the CBO’s latest budget forecasts
that crop subsidies will cost a total of $22 billion for fiscal 2016, 2017, and
2018 -- a 9% increase from the estimate it made a year ago of $20.1 billion for
those years.
The main recipients would be corn, soybean, wheat, and
peanut growers. Corn, soybeans, and wheat are the three most widely planted
crops in the country, grown on 225 million acres while peanuts are planted on
about 1.6 to 1.7 million acres annually. Corn farmers were projected to get
$10.5 billion from 2016 to 2018, soybean growers $3.5 billion, wheat growers
$2.9 billion, and peanuts $1.7 billion, per agriculture.com.
