By Anne Schechinger
The House and Senate budget reconciliation bills are packed with loopholes that will send tens of billions more dollars in subsidies to the largest farms. But most farmers in Minnesota would not benefit much, if at all, from these proposed changes.
The bills include proposals that would raise total national spending on farm subsidies by:
- Increasing crop price guarantees by 10% to 20%
- Making 30 million additional acres of farmland eligible for subsidy payments
- Raising payment limits from $125,000 to $155,000 per person
- Allowing every member of a farm organized as a pass-through entity, including corporate farms, to collect an amount up to the new payment limit.
But most farmers in Minnesota don’t get money from commodity farm subsidy programs – and this wouldn’t change much under the budget bills.
According to the Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture, Minnesota is home to over 65,000 farms. And yet in 2024, only 4,662 received funding from federal commodity subsidy programs.
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