Latest news with #agricultural subsidies
New York Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Democrats Can Finally Stop Pandering to Farmers
Here's some bad news: The 'big, beautiful bill' that President Trump signed into law on July 4 accelerates the egregious bipartisan tradition of showering taxpayer dollars on well-off farmers. It is projected to pour more than $90 billion into new agricultural subsidies and tax credits for farm-grown fuels like corn ethanol, while making it easier for the biggest farmers to vacuum up cash and the least sustainable biofuels to qualify for credits. It gets worse: The congressional Republicans who passed the bill without Democratic votes also ended the tradition of pairing the lavish handouts known as the 'farm safety net' with an actual food safety net for the poor. The bill slashes nearly $200 billion from the federal food stamp program known as SNAP, making life harder for millions of vulnerable families. But here's a potential silver lining: The G.O.P.'s decision to sever the half-century-old pairing of farm handouts with food assistance offers Democratic politicians an opportunity to stop supporting environmentally and fiscally ludicrous subsidies for farmers who wouldn't dream of voting for Democrats. Instead, they could start pushing sensible policies focused on eaters instead of growers. It's time someone in Washington did. For decades, U.S. farm policy has been a bipartisan festival of ag-lobby pandering, shoveling enormous piles of cash to farmers through grants, heavily subsidized loans, even more heavily subsidized insurance, disaster aid and an alphabet soup of other thinly disguised welfare programs. Large farms that grow the most common row crops get the largest subsidies, with extra incentives for corn and soybean growers to produce supposedly eco-friendly biofuels that actually threaten forests and the climate. Republican support for this kind of agricultural socialism is philosophically hypocritical but politically understandable, as rural America has trended overwhelmingly Republican. In the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, the G.O.P. provided more goodies than ever for its loyal base of multimillionaires in John Deere caps, relaxing payment and income limits for the wealthiest farmers, creating new insurance subsidies for big poultry producers and demanding absurdly lenient sustainability analyses of crop-based aviation fuels. In the past, even as their brand became poisonous in rural America, many Democrats pandered to big farmers just as relentlessly as Republicans, supporting most of the same subsidies while echoing the same clichés about 'heartland values.' Urban Democrats who might have otherwise fought farm bills reliably supported them as long as the bills funded food stamps. Would you like to submit a Letter to the Editor? Use the form below to share your thoughts on this or any other piece published in The New York Times in the past seven days. For your letter to be considered for publication, it should be 150 to 300 words and include your first and last names. If it is selected, an editor will contact you to review any necessary edits. Your submission must be exclusive to The New York Times. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Click here for more information about the selection process. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
11-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The EU Is Heading Down the Wrong Farming Track
It's not easy to be a farmer, even in the European Union, where the biggest budget expenditure is on agricultural subsidies. After months of protests and a rightward swing in parliament, the EU is now debating the sector's future. Unfortunately, the direction it's moving in doesn't seem to have the best interests of farmers in mind. An April survey conducted by Ipsos revealed that more than half of farmers surveyed are pessimistic about the future of their operations, largely because of economics: About 40% cited increasing input prices or expenses and insufficient market prices as challenges. Farming is also one of the most exposed sectors to the climate and biodiversity crises: Half of Romanian farmers cited the weather or climatic events as a main concern, with 44% citing environmental constraints as a reason they'd quit farming. Though just 26% overall cited it as a difficulty, climate change is making it harder to produce everything from olive oil and potatoes to champagne and cheese. EU-backed analysis published in May showed that extreme weather costs the agricultural sector an average of €28.3 billion ($33.1 billion) each year. Most of these losses are uninsured — and uninsurable.
