Guebert: More USDA money means less farm program reform

A word of caution: Do not get between reality and political forces in Congress when Republicans and Democrats agree to spend more money on farm programs rather than reform the very programs that are failing farmers and rural America.

Case in point: Barely two weeks after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its per-acre payment scheme for the just weeks-old, $12-billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program, Republican ag leaders agreed to “discuss” adding another $15 billion to the bailout pot.

Ag Democrats quickly seconded the idea and even more quickly upped the ante for their “Farm and Family Relief Act” to $17 billion.

For those keeping score at home, the ad hoc spending — added to the $40.5 billion in “Federal Government direct farm program payments” already sent to farm country last year — expands the subsidy haul tied to it to nearly $70 billion, smashing the previous record of $45.6 billion set in 2020, the last year of the first Trump Administration.

In fact, when — not if — the additional $15 to $17 billion in direct payments are added to 2025’s tab, the total will be more than the entire, four-year Biden administration farm subsidy cost, $64 billion, which included the costly COVID-19 clean-up year of 2021.

More importantly, this still-widening river of federal money points to at least two longstanding problems with today’s farm program. The first is apparent and easily fixed; the second requires Congress and ag groups to do something they are deeply suspicious of: change.

The easily fixable problem is tariffs. If a key element in today’s crop insurance-centered farm program is ag exports, then tariffs are a wrench to grind its gears. For proof, look at farm program spending when the only two tariff programs in at least a generation were imposed by the Trump administrations. Both were very expensive and both cost farmers and ranchers money and markets.

The fix? Easy. Stop. Now.

The second problem is the farm program itself. A cost-effective farm program built on crop insurance aimed at expanding ag exports may have been a good idea 20 years ago, but it has not aged well. In fact, that world doesn’t exist anymore.

For example, in 2005, Brazil’s soybean production totaled 61.8 million metric tons, or 2.27 billion bu. This year, USDA forecasts the Brazilian soy crop at 178 mmt, or a staggering 6.5 billion bu. That’s a 286% increase in less than one generation and it rapidly changed the global soy market.

Worse, all signs point to even more Brazilian hectares, more Brazilian production and more Brazilian global competition. The only real answer competitors like the U.S. have to that almost inevitable outcome is, of course, lower prices.

And that leads to what?

Mostly to what we have seen in rural America for decades: falling farm and ranch numbers, declining rural incomes; increased federal farm program costs; rising farm, ranch and supplier consolidation; stagnant, often failing schools, health care, roads and bridges; degraded natural resources like water, air and soil; and rural economies deeply dependent on government spending.

In fact, if you live in rural America today, you are older, sicker and poorer than Americans living in “metro” America. Anyone who has driven 50 miles in any direction in any rural area in the United States knows this.

Or at least can see it — even if they don’t admit it.

Even members of Congress, despite their well-honed ability to see — then subsidize — a manure digester when they plainly smell a load of manure, know this. Rather than fix it, though, they choose to compete over who can throw the most money at it the fastest.

That’s not leadership; that’s negligence.

(The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Contact information is posted at farmandfoodfile.com. © 2026 ag comm)