The Republican “Project 2025”
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a horrifying blueprint for authoritarianism, according to New York University professor Ruth Ben Ghiat, for example, author of Strongmen, Mussolini to the Present. Key parts of the plan call for dramatic changes closely similar to what dictators have done and are doing. Others have criticized the report’s approach to a variety of important issue areas. The full report is found in the Heritage Foundation’s book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, (https://www.project2025.org/policy/).
What I examine here, however, is Project 2025’s assault on USDA, especially on farm policy. These issues are covered in chapter 10, “The Department of Agriculture,” by Daren Bakst, (30 pages). In this chapter, the major farm programs of the Commodity Title and related aspects of the Crop Insurance Title and trade policy take up relatively little space. That’s what I focus on here, plus some more generalized pages of introduction and conclusion.
Does Project 2025 Offer Moderate and Conventional Reform to the Commodity Title?
At first glance, the agricultural section of Project 2025 seems quite benign and conventional compared to other sections. For example, as it’s core policy recommendation for the Commodity Title, while it calls for keeping some farm subsidies, over all it calls for reducing and sometimes ending farm subsidies. For conservatives generally, most of mainstream and alternative media, and also for most Food, Environmental, Church, Hunger, and Sustainable Agriculture progressives, especially in the 21st century, this has been seen as a route to reform. Really this is not reform at all, as it doesn’t address the huge historical issues of the Commodity Title. In light of these and other widespread conservative and progressive misunderstandings of farm policy and programs, I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail to explain Project 2025’s take on agriculture in an adequate historical, economic, sociological and political context.
My Farm Justice Critique of Project 2025
What I offer here, however, in response to Project 2025’s coverage of agriculture, is a “Farm Justice” critique. “Farm Justice” represents 21st century update to the historical paradigm of the Family Farm Movement, the main social group advocating for real farm policy reform for well over 100 years. These reforms have strongly represented the authentic interests of farmers generally, and the main provisions have repeatedly been supported by most farmers. This too is rarely known on right and left sides today. Politically this approach is best understood as “radical center,” as representing both conservative and progressive values, reconciled together. Again, however, the political values of the farm justice paradigm, and the rationale for it, has generally not been accurately understood by any of the groups mentioned above.
To understand why the very conservative Project 2025 seems to offer moderate or conventional changes to these few dominant policies for agriculture, therefore, we need to examine it in a large historical, sociological, economic and political context that is strongly evidence-based.
Another nail in the Farmer’s Coffin
First, generally, as I’ve reflected for a few days on why Project 2025 seems so harshly authoritarian in some ways, and so seemingly benign on the Commodity Title farm programs, a conclusion has dawned upon me. Project 2025 seems moderate for agriculture because the authoritarian assault on farm programs had already been proposed and initiated decades ago, and had been increasingly enacted by Congress, over seven decades, leading to almost total elimination of the New Deal farm justice programs of the Commodity Title, already, by the late 1990s.
To understand these decades of increasingly successful conservative, authoritarian efforts against farmers, however, we need to look back at the report An Adaptive Program for Agriculture from the Committee for Economic Development, (CED,) in 1962. It is a classic example of the reductionism and authoritarianism of the harshly conservative approach now seen in Project 2025. The CED is the key equivalent from earlier decades of the Heritage Foundation today, just as An Adaptive Program for Agriculture was an earlier version of what Project 2025 is doing today. Each is a classic example of the academic reductionism and authoritarianism of the conservative approach. The CED report labeled farmers and farm workers as “excess resources” and called for their massive “elimination,” “a reduction … on the order of one third in a period of not more than five years.” The recommended method of getting rid of farmers was to lower minimum farm price floors for the major crops, to thereby lower these farm prices, to thereby drastically lower farm income and force farmers out. (An interesting side issue is that, like Project 2025, the conservative CED called for some farm subsidies in its 1962 report.)
Here I am reminded of another reductionist, conservative position, that of Herman Kahn, in his book, On Thermonuclear War, (1960,) which was written just two years prior to the CED report. Kahn contemplated on how many millions dead in a nuclear war would be “acceptable losses.” Erich Fromm, in May Man Prevail, (1961, 1964,) saw this as “balance sheet thinking.” He wrote that “We are dealing here with one of the most crucial problems of our age-- the transformation of men to numbers on a balance sheet.” The CED’s label “excess resources” is a clear example of this “crucial problem.”
Congress did not enact the extreme levels of the CED reductions, but instead made the reductions in the programs, (and in farmers,) over a longer period of time. In the long run, as further described below, Congress went far beyond the CED recommendations, and far more than one third of farmers were lost.
This, then, is the larger context behind Project 2025’s position on agriculture. It is, in the end, extremely authoritarian and extremely anti-farmer, as Republicans have been for decades. Extreme language was not needed in it, however, because the damage had already been done.
Project 2025 Ignores and Denies “The Farm Problem,” and So Is Radically Anti-Farmer
Economically, agriculture “lacks price responsiveness” “on both the supply and the demand side for *aggregate agriculture,” (*for the basic groups of major crops as a whole that are grown across the various regions). (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/325.html) This means that, in the case of agriculture especially, “free markets,” (or the markets we actually have, without market management,) chronically fail to balance supply and demand, resulting in ongoing low prices. In fact, they fail on both supply (farmers) and demand (consumers and industry,) sides. (see previous link) What free farm markets actually do is provide chronic subsidization of agribusiness buyers, paid, not by taxpayers, but by farmers, and hidden by the false ideology that free markets work for agriculture. This is the basic condition of agriculture, “the farm problem.” This is the reality that was fixed by the farm bill. Project 2025, in contrast, seeks to “reduce market distortions,” to maintain the full benefits of of market failure for agribusiness, at the expense of farmers, at the expense of the U.S. farm economy, and at the expense of exporting our farm products at sale prices that are below our costs of production, (chronically losing money on export sales).
The Project 2025 report shows almost no awareness of this reality, so it’s based upon an over all illiteracy with regard to the biggest issue of agricultural economics. Sociologically, as mentioned above, this illiteracy conveniently supports chronic welfare for giant agribusiness companies at the expense of farmers.
Conservatives often argue that the original market management farm bills of the New Deal were something needed only for the crisis of the Great Depression. So it shouldn’t have continued. But really the farm problem of chronic free market failure existed for 60 years prior to the Depression, (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/325.html) with a few small exceptions, and it has existed ever since, again with a few small exceptions, (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/268.html) and it is generally projected ahead another ten years whenever USDA or the Congressional Budget Office (CBO,) makes farm program projections.
When it comes to specific farm bill proposals, the argument implied above is made overtly. The report calls for “a safety net to help farmers when they fall on hard times.” They’re referring here to farm subsidies, and imply that they should only be given occasionally, because, in their theory, (that free markets work for agriculture,) they’re only needed occasionally, such as when there’s a disaster of some kind.
As it turns out, there is abundant evidence from a variety of economic indicators that conservatives are wrong about the farm economy. For example, from 1981 through 2006, farm market prices were below full costs as measured by USDA’s Economic Research Service most of the time. I’ve computed these results for eight major crops that are grown on most cropland, multiplying the net results per acre, (prices minus full economic costs, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/commodity-costs-and-returns/) by the number of acres, (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/) and then adding up the results for all eight crops for each year. The over all result is that there was only one year above zero, 1996. (See the data in the accompanying slide show.) Under the influence of biofuels and a drought, 3 crop prices then rose above full costs for 7 years in a row, (corn, soybeans, rice, 2007-2013,) while 5 other crops remained below zero most of the time, (wheat, cotton, oats, barley and grain sorghum). Corn then again fell below full costs every year for seven years, 2014-2020, and prices for most other crops were similar.
This false analysis of the farm economy is supported generally throughout the report. For example, the report begins with this false statement (emphasis added).
American farmers efficiently and safely produce food to meet the needs of individuals around the globe. Because of the innovation and resilience of the nation’s farmers, American agriculture is a model for the world. If farmers are allowed to operate without unnecessary government intervention, American agriculture will continue to flourish, producing plentiful, safe, nutritious, and affordable food.
A similar statement is made in the conclusion.
This chapter started with a discussion of the incredible success of American farmers and American agriculture in general. This is how the chapter should close as well. Americans are blessed with an agricultural sector, and a food system in general, which are worthy of incredible respect.
The truth is that agriculture did flourish from 1942-1952, under the New Deal farm programs that were raised up to “parity” levels, (prices similar to what’s called “a living wage”). (On all of this and more see the accompanying slide show of data charts.) Then, however, starting during the Eisenhower administration, the programs were reduced, more and more and more, 1953-1995. During this time 60% of farms were lost, including almost 95% of nonwhite farms in the South.(Data from the Census of Agriculture, various years, https://agcensus.library.cornell.edu.) Then, from 1996-2024, the remaining market management programs, (for the major crops,) were ended, (with the exception of the programs for sugar beets and sugarcane, which continued, but at extremely low price floor levels, as discussed below). (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/281.html)
All of this was a massive de facto subsidy for the agribusiness output complex, (the buyers of farm products,) paid for by farmers via cheap, below cost prices. The reductions below the parity standard add up to trillions of dollars. Even if a much lower standard is used, the result is still in the trillions.
Related to all of this is that, as Project 2025 calls for a continuation of farm programs that are abusive to farmers, it spins this conservatism as a defense of farmers! Their first priority issue, they proclaim, is to “Defend American Agriculture.” This is also the first recommendation of the report, to “Proactively Defend Agriculture.” As I’m showing, what they really do, and have done for decades, is defend giant, rich agribusiness companies at the expense of farmers. These are the real beneficiaries of the conservative changes to farm programs over the past seven decades, but they are not mentioned in the report.
Farm Subsidies: Project 2025’s Treatment in the Historical Context of Conservative Farm Policy
Conservatives have long been opponents of welfare programs and subsidies, at least for ordinary people. On the other hand, the recommendations of the harshly conservative Project 2025 report, (like the 1962 CED Report, An Adaptive Program for Agriculture,) include farm subsidies, (“a safety net”). How is that, and why would that be so?
Though it’s seldom known or mentioned today, the original farm programs of the Democratic New Deal, when fully up to speed, featured minimum farm price floors and supply reductions, as needed to balance supply and demand and maintain adequate farm price levels. Subsidy data is available from USDA’s Economic Research Service, and while it shows some early subsidies for cotton, we see none for wheat, corn, oats, barley, grain sorghum, rice, or soybeans. (https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833) I find that, from 1933 through 1960, subsidies seem to make up less than 1% of farm program benefits, while market management impacts made up 99%.
Project 2025 treats the last remaining market management programs, (for sugar beets and sugarcane,) as equivalent to subsidies. Really, with regard to most major issues today, they’re opposites. Market management prevents or, if inadequate, still reduces, cheap grain prices for export dumping, (losing money on exports,) CAFO feeds, and junk food, for example.
No subsidies are needed when market management programs are adequate. Instead, subsidies cover up market failure, paying farmers to compensate for Congress choosing to have the U.S., on the backs of its farmers, lose money on exports and domestically.
For most of the parity years, (1942-1952,) the New Deal programs actually made money for the government. That’s because market management included price floor loans, and farmers paid interest on them. Additionally, as part of this supply management, the Commodity Credit Corporation used a revolving fund to sometimes buy grain from farmers and then sell it. Since supply was adequately managed during these years, the government tended to make money on the sales. When they took in grain on a lower price year, then increased supply reductions the next year, they were able to sell it at a profit.
(Note: when the conservatives of the Eisenhower administration took over, they disliked the programs and mismanaged them, with greater and greater carry over of supplies, resulting in market price levels that fell below price floor levels. The programs then became much more expensive. (See data on this in the supplementary slide show, here drive.google.com/....)
Over the decades of decline, agribusiness lobbied for greater and greater covert subsidization of themselves, by farmers, via the lowering of price floors and the maintenance of greater carry over of supplies. Meanwhile farmers protested massively against the program reductions and against the conservative reports like those of the CED and related groups. This put Congress in a “hard place,” between the grassroots farmers and giant corporations. What Congress did, then, was to maintain and increase the program reductions for agribusiness and against farmers, but at the same time, to add subsidies for farmers. The subsidies did not make up for the reductions, so net farm income fell to low levels, and generally stayed low. Subsidies for corn, grain sorghum and wheat started in 1961. Barley was added in 1962, cotton in 1964, rice in 1976, oats in 1982, soybeans in 1998, and rye never. (See James S. Ward, compiler, Farm Commodity and Related Programs, 1976.)
During the 1980s these continuing and increasing net reductions in farm income led to a snowballing of what had become an increasingly chronic farm crisis. The 1985 Farm Bill, passed by conservatives and signed by Republican President Reagan, made huge reductions in price floor levels, and also increased subsidies by a very large, but lesser amount, for a reduction in farm income as the net result. So it was a massive increase in the subsidization of agribusiness, (via much lower farm prices, and so paid by farmers,) combined by a huge increase in government spending. This occurred as agribusinesses buying grain and other farm products already had very high returns on equity, and while returns on equity for U.S. farmers were below zero, sometimes far below zero. (This was reported in Forbes Magazine, and corporate data is also available in A.V. Krebs, The Corporate Reapers. Farmer data is available at https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17838. Cf. the accompanying slide show.) Keep in mind, however, that the 1985 Farm Bill, which was designed to massively devastate farmers in order to provide welfare to agribusiness, turned out to be a better farm bill for farmers than any farm bill since then, so harsh have been the continuing conservative changes to farm programs.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the 1985 Republican farm-welfare-on-steriods (and agribusiness-welfare-paid-by-farmers) bill, progressive populist Democrats again called for running farm programs like a business, with market management, in an updated version of New Deal farm programs. (All major industry companies manage supply for profitable selling prices. (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/316.html, http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/148.html, https://www.npr.org/2008/04/24/89922176/from-clunker-to-cruiser-ford-posts-quarterly-profit) Farmers are far too tiny to be able to do this for themselves, so a government program is always needed if the U.S. is to make a profit on farm exports.) The 1980s proposals of Democrats to counteract the Republican attack on farmers were studied by the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute at Iowa State University and the University of Missouri, in comparison to the conservative 1985 Farm Bill. (https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsfaprsr/244143.htm) Among the findings, (adjusted for inflation in 2019 dollars,) since there were no subsidies in the Democratic proposal, were that government costs would fall from $218 billion in the 85 bill, to $94 billion in the Democratic alternative, a savings of $124 billion. At the same time, the export value of eight major crops would rise from $248 billion in the Republican program, to $445 billion in the Democratic alternative, an increase of $197 billion. That’s with a reduction in the quantity of exports for six major crops from 122 million bushels under the 1985 farm bill, to 100 million bushels under the Democratic alternative. (See more data from these studies in the accompanying slide show.) This would also have meant a large reduction in the costs of production.
Another marker in the history of our increasingly conservative farm programs was when the remaining programs, (for the major crops,) were ended in 1996, leading to the lowest farm prices in history, (i.e. 8 of the 9 lowest market prices for corn and soybeans, 1997-2006, and very similar for other major crops). This farm bill featured another conservative idea: transition subsidies. The bill called for an end to all farm subsidies by 2002, but included quite a few subsidies for the years 1997 through 2001, supposedly to help farmers transition toward even lower prices while also having no subsidies.
This long sought after conservative result, failed massively and almost immediately. Basically, conservatives in Congress were quickly causing a massive farm crisis like that of the 1980s. This was immediately protested, not just by farmers, but also by bankers, for example. (Many farm banks were lost during the 1980s farm crisis, along with large numbers of other rural and agricultural businesses.) Congressional conservatives did not correct their mistake, however, but instead poured in huge amounts of farm subsidies, to cover up their humiliating failure. This occurred through four emergency farm bills, in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. These extra subsidies were then added to the 2002 farm bill. Subsidy amounts were then reduced in each subsequent farm bill, (2008, 2014, 2018,) and, Project 2025 calls for even further reductions.
As discussed above, all of the conservative reductions in farm prices led to the U.S. losing money massively on farm exports, with the losses being paid by U.S. farmers, not agribusiness middlemen and exporters. At the same time, with the subsidies going to farmers, (for example, instead of higher prices for farmers and subsidies going to agribusiness,) farmers received increasing blame from sources on multiple sides. Here again, these conservative changes were the blatant opposite of any call to “proactively defend farmers!” Clearly then, this was a massive and decades long international farm trade war, a race to the bottom.
The conservative farm trade war is the opposite of what Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC,) did to oil supplies and prices. OPEC managed supply and greatly increased oil prices, even to levels comparable to 700% of parity or more. For example, during the 1940s and again during the early 1970, the price for a barrel of oil was comparable to the price for a bushel of wheat or soybeans, a hundredweight of rice, or two bushels of corn. (Compare oil, http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp to farm prices, https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/c534fn92g?locale=en.) Then, OPEC managed supply for greater profits, and the U.S reduced and ended market management, to lower the market prices for farmers below the costs of production and achieve lower profits.
When Republican President Donald Trump came into office, he created an additional trade war with China, on top of the ongoing one where farmers lost money on sales during his time in office. (https://www.slideshare.net/bradwilson581525/trump-subsidies-in-context-states) He then passed more emergency farm bills to provide large additional farm subsidies. At the same time, the trade war caused farm prices fall. Over all, under Trump, subsidies were greatly increased, but total farm income, (including subsidies,) fell well below the levels of Obama, and now, of Biden.
What we see, then, with regard to farm subsidies, is that conservatives have repeatedly failed to apply adequate business practices to farm programs. Meanwhile, though they’ve called for reducing and ending farm subsidies, they’ve also repeatedly increased them, to conceal their larger policy, program and ideology failures. (For more data and analysis of these issues, see this slide show, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/democratic-party-farm-programspdf/256537282.)
Project 2025’s Subsidy Changes as Another Nail in the U.S. Farmers’ Coffin
This, then, is some of the longer historical context behind the treatment of farm subsidies in the Project 2025 report. The chapter on agriculture calls for ending the two major commodity subsidy programs, Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC), plus a modest reduction in Crop Revenue Insurance subsidies. In addition, they call for no farm subsidy programs like Trump’s emergency Market Facilitation Program and related subsidies in response to the impacts of the Covid 19 crisis. (Imagine how low Net Farm Income would have fallen under Trump if that had been his response to these crises that he helped cause! They also call for an end to the zero cost sugar program, which has price floors and supply management, though at very low levels, and no subsidies. At the same time, they do not call for any reductions in the massive de facto subsidies that U.S. and foreign/multinational agribusiness firms receive, paid for by U.S. farmers in the form of cheap, below cost farm prices.
This, then, is what I mean by Project 2025 pounding “another nail in the U.S. farmers’ coffin.” Without rational business principles behind the decades of farm programs made more conservative, farmers definitely need whatever subsidies they can get. In this sense, subsidies are the only form of economic justice that farmers are allowed to get. It’s very weak and very problematic farm justice, (as will be further explained below,) but it’s all that Congress has been giving. As we’ve seen, then, most of the nails that have devastated U.S. agriculture have come from conservatives of other decades, so the Project 2025 changes seem modest and conventional. But they do clearly seek to make things worse for farmers, and better for agribusiness. They do not, by any stretch of the imagination, “defend farmers.” They merely pretend to defend the farmers that they more completely screw over.
These Conservatives Want to Subsidize Insurance Premiums by $40% to 50%
There are many additional problems with the Project 2025 report on agriculture. First, on the Commodity Title programs, consider their changes to the farm subsidy programs discussed above. In the case of Crop Revenue Insurance, they end up supporting big subsidies for what is about the most irrational farm program ever. What they specifically call for is a reduction in the large insurance premium subsidies for farmers from “about 60%” to “not ... more than 50 percent,” and perhaps just “40%.” I find it to be quite telling that they give no explanation for why 40% of someone’s insurance premiums should be subsidized by the federal government. And they’re conservatives, right! They’re against welfare, against subsidies! I mean, you really must laugh at that one. What’s going on here?
But wait, there’s more that they’re not telling us! Insurance companies are also subsidized by similar amounts in these programs! The Project 2025 agriculture author also mentions nothing about this! Big subsidies to insurance companies are to be maintained.
I’m convinced that these glaring anomalies in the conservative farm program paradigm exist for important reasons. In very general terms, someone surely got to the author and convinced him to support these inconsistencies. First, it means that crop (revenue) insurance must be maintained! Further, it means that, to maintain it, 40% to 50% premium subsidies for farmers must be maintained, and farmers will still participate in the program! That’s if all of the subsidies to insurance companies are also continued, to keep them participating in the program. As I indicated above, something very irrational is going on here. This requires some further explanation and historical context.
First, in light of the massive failure of the 1996 farm bill, (named “Freedom to Farm” by Republicans, as if it were part of the 1990s “Contract for America,” and widely labeled “Freedom to Fail” by authentic farmer groups, as part of a “contract on America,) conservative Republicans on the Agriculture Committees seem to have concluded that there must be farm subsidies, though they continually try to reduce them, except when they’re needed to hide Republican failures, such as during the Reagan’s Farm Crisis, the crisis after 1996, and the Trump crisis, as we’ve seen. In between these times is when they vote to lower them as much as they can get away with.
Of course, no subsidies are needed with adequate market management programs, where, for example, the U.S. makes a profit on farm exports, and this is what Democrats long advocated for. Farm commodity subsidies are therefore irrational. The exception is the irrational case where the conservatives want the U.S. to lose money on exports and sales out of farming states, farming communities, and off farms. Then subsidies are “needed” to provide some low grade economic farm justice, and hide the chromic failure of conservative farm economics.
Very important in this context is spin. Starting in the 1990s, Republicans, (encouraged by giant grain companies, especially Cargill, who’s executive, Dan Amstutz, became a government trade negotiator, https://www.iatp.org/documents/brief-history-de-coupling-farm-policy-proposals-united-states.) switched from supporting countercyclical subsidies, (given based upon need,) to “de-coupled” subsidies, given on an ongoing basis whether you need them or not. The latter approach, though even more irrational than previous subsidies, was seen as ideologically superior. This was the time of free trade agreements, like NAFTA, and GATT-WTO, where free market failure was supported internationally, to further benefit agribusiness at the expense of farmers. The basic argument was that if you give subsidies when farmers need them, (countercyclically,) it distorts planting decisions, distorts trade, and causes cheap market prices, export dumping. (Note: the Project 2025 chapter on agriculture specifically emphasizes the principle of a “need to reduce market distortions. Subsidies should not influence planting decisions,...”) Conservatives claimed that countercycical subsidies do just that. But if you give basically the same amount of subsidies in a way that is unrelated to year to year need, then subsidies are not supposed have those affects. So conservatives claim that, in the first case, farm subsidies violate free trade agreements, but not in the second case, and the de-coupled subsidies were declared to be “WTO compliant, and allowable under free trade agreements. This is clearly not true, however, as subsidies do not affect market prices more than a tiny amount, up or down, as numerous studies have found. (See p. 2o here, https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Paradox_of_Agricultural_Subsidies_MeasurementI.pdf.) Instead, cheap prices and export dumping are caused by the lack of price responsiveness, by chronic free market failure, combined with a lack of market management policies and programs. That is, the problem is caused by the chronically failing Republican policies and programs of history. It’s not caused by the later compensations for those failures.
The original subsidies of the 1996 farm bill, (prior to the 4 emergency farm bills,) were the decoupled kind. The emergency bills supplemented them with countercyclical subsidies. They were each calculated in very similar ways for each farm based historical “base” acreages and “program payment yields” for that farm. The differences, therefore, really had no significant impact on farmers. Both kinds were then included in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills, (and quite similar for 2014 and 2018, as described below). (See more on these questions here, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-case-against-bipartisan-farm-bills/254542497.)
While farmers saw that the decoupled approach to subsidies was a stupid idea, it was initially no big deal. At the time of the 2002 farm bill, for example, farm prices for major crops had been below full costs every year since 1981, (except 1996,) so getting subsidies every year was no big deal as they were always needed. A few years later, however, a biofuels boom brought corn, soybean and rice prices above full costs for 7 years in a row. Meanwhile the decoupled subsidy amounts of the 2002 and 2008 farm bills did not change at all for those crops. This created a humiliating failure for the Republican spin machine, and the programs were harshly criticized across the board.
This, then, is the historical context behind the crop revenue insurance supported by the Republican Project 2025. What happened is that conservatives dropped the “WTO compliant” spin, and switched to a language of “risk management” and “crop insurance.” Farm subsidies were re-formulated and, notably, re-labeled as “risk management,” in the form of “crop insurance.” Both concepts, (risk management and insurance,) are well known, respectable, standard business practices. So Agriculture Committee conservatives had a whole new spin to use against critics!
While the programs are often referred to as “crop insurance,” the key aspect is “crop revenue insurance,” getting farm commodity subsidies from insurance companies rather than from the government, by buying insurance for revenue losses, (not just losses from things like hail and wind damage). The money would then come from the Crop Insurance Title, and not the Commodity Title. According to the Project 2025 report, (citing and quoting a report from the Congressional Research Service,) “Revenue Protection was the most frequently purchased policy type in 2019, accounting for almost 70 percent of [crop insurance] policies purchased.”
Ok, given the facts I’ve presented above, what’s enormously wrong, (and enormously irrational,) about this picture, about the Conservative approach, the Project 2025 approach?!?! Well, hail and wind damage occur very occasionally. So you buy insurance, and it’s usually not needed, so the company usually doesn’t need to pay you anything. On the other hand, free market failure in agriculture is chronic, as seen in my statistic about how eight major crops, as a whole, were below full costs almost every year 1981 through 2006. So what insurance company is going to insure you against the kinds of losses that occur almost every year? Viewed differently, these farm prices were low because Congress failed to provide adequate market management programs, (minimum farm price floors and supply reductions, as needed). Congress reduced market management, increasingly, from 1953 through 1995, then ended the programs, (except they didn’t end the much reduced program for sugar beets and sugarcane). Farmers have fought against this, repeatedly offering alternative programs that would create much more U.S. wealth and make much more money on exports, but they didn’t get passed by Congress. So what insurance company would insure farmers against Congress continuing to fail to adequately manage farm markets, such as in a 2024 Farm Bill? The answer is obvious. None! Or viewed differently, no farmer could come remotely close to affording such insurance if they did offer it. This is, therefore, extreme irrationality.
Related to these points, note that the Project 2025 chapter on agriculture emphasizes the need to “Clarify that spending,” (subsidy,) “is only to address problems that are temporary in nature….” As I pointed out above, that would be like hail or wind damage. Elsewhere the report states, “Any safety net for farmers should be a true safety net—one that helps farmers when they have experienced serious unforeseen losses (preferably when there has been a disaster or unforeseen natural event causing damage) and that exists to help them in unusual situations.” So, here again, they are blind to the realities of chronic market failure. So USDA shouldn’t be giving farmers subsidies every year, because farm markets are supposed to be fine, and farmers are therefore not supposed to need them every year, according to this false conservative ideology. The obvious problem, as explained above, is that free markets chronically fail for agriculture, so the need exists nearly every year, and not only occasionally. In this point they again deny the actual nature of the farm economy, and deny that the resulting “farm problem” exists at all.
Another related issue is the statement in the report that “The overall goal should be to eliminate subsidy dependence.” Apparently they believe that, if you give subsidies, that changes farming to where subsidies are needed, to where farmers are dependent upon them. This ignores the most obvious fact of the chronic market realities, of chronic market failure.
To summarize this point, here we have a conservative farm program approach to hide the failure of Republicans reducing and ending market management, (no longer running farm programs like a business). It’s a program that conservatives see as good spin, (“It’s risk management, buying insurance, standard business practices!”) But it’s totally whacko with regard to the real world.
What then did Republicans do, (in this case, as in so many previous cases)? They kept the program but then added large government subsidies, (after all,) subsidizing BOTH the premiums of farmers and the costs to the insurance companies.
Another aspect of the program is that the standard of need is a floating or relative standard. It’s based upon the level of prices in the spring of the year, which could be be either very low, well below production costs, or very high, well above production costs. The standard of need is seen in how much the prices in the fall are lower or higher relative to whatever the spring prices were. Benefits come from lower fall prices, (no matter how high they are in absolute terms,) and not from higher fall prices, (no matter how low they are in absolute terms). This then is similar to the decoupled programs mentioned above. Here farmers may receive subsidies when they don’t really need them at all, or they may not receive any subsidies when the real need is great. So here again, the program is irrational and wastes money or alternately, fails to help farmers when they need the help. In other words, there’s generally a poor connection between the proclaimed goals of the program and the results of it. Like all subsidy programs and like the decoupled programs described above, in practical terms, it’s highly inefficient. Of course, efficiency is well known to be a conservative Republican value, and it’s repeatedly mentioned in the Project 2025 report. This, then, is one of the standard conservative hypocrisies related to farm programs, and in the Project 2025 report.
Note. One criticism of the programs is that the subsidies to insurance companies were so large that they were making returns on equity close to 17%, while a study of the subsidies and the companies commissioned by USDA’s Risk Management Agency found that returns on equity of about 12% would have been “reasonable.” (https://legacy.rma.usda.gov/pubs/2009/millimanhistoricalrate.pdf) These, then, are the subsidies that Project 2025 did not cut, did not even mention. During the same years as the study, the U.S. farm sector, including it’s subsidies, achieved a return on equity in the low single digits. (https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17838) So the much bigger and more objectively criticized subsidies to the insurance companies are to be maintained, while the much more austere subsidies to farmers are to be reduced, (but kept) according to Project 2025. Here again, very clearly, Project 2025 does not “defend farmers!” They do the opposite! They defend agribusiness against farmers, while also defending themselves ideologically. (For more references on the follies of Crop Revenue Insurance, see https://znetwork.org/zblogs/primer-revenue-insurance-in-the-2012-farm-bill-by-brad-wilson/.)
Project 2025 Against Sugar Farmers
Ok, lets look more at the other Project 2025 cuts in farm programs. They call for totally cutting the sugar program, the most rational program left in the Commodity Title. Here, they point out that the sugar program “intentionally tries to restrict supply and thereby drives up prices,” (like all big industry companies regularly do for themselves). Their major criticism, then, is that “The program costs consumers as much as $3.7 billion a year,” because, though the price floors are very low, the program nevertheless raises sugar prices to levels that are higher than world market prices.
The Project 2025 position on sugar needs to be examined on the basis of the economic facts. They refer to one study, but it examines refined sugar prices over a short time frame, not farm gate sugar prices. In contrast, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) has shown that, between 1982 and 2004, farm prices for sugar declined a lot, while consumer prices for sugar increased a lot, more than doubling the gap between the two prices. This was likely influenced significantly by increasing market concentration, as ever larger firms have taken over the sugar processing and retailing industries. (https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/451_2_72784.pdf) The figure of $3.7 billion per year does not, therefore, come from what U.S. sugar farmers are paid through the farm bill’s sugar program, but rather from what retailers are charging.
Note: farm prices for sugarcane and sugar beets are much lower than value added prices for the refined product. In 2012, for example, the farmers received only 6.1¢ out of the total sugar and sweets dollar. (https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17885) The use of statistics by Project 2025 here, therefore, is strongly biased against farmers, and the opposite of “defending farmers.”
Project 2025 and the sugar study it used complain about the U.S. domestic price being significantly higher than the world price. The IATP report points out, however, that world prices have been “barely more than half” of world production costs. So the whole world is being massively subsidized by the world’s sugar farmers. What the U.S. sugar program does domestically, is greatly reduce the subsidy that U.S. sugar farmers have paid, to the processors, and through them, to consumers. Project 2025 wants to greatly increase that de facto subsidy. Here again, the plan is a concrete financial attack on U.S. farmers, not a defense of farmers.
Behind all of this is that Project 2025 apparently assumes that free markets work for sugar, and therefore managing markets to raise sugar prices is exorbitant, an increase above a rational price. On the other hand, they provide no valid evidence that these markets work, or that U.S. farm prices for sugar are at all high. There are a variety of kinds of U.S. sugar data that do provide evidence. For example, from 1995 through 2007 (when USDA-ERS quit computing this data,) sugar beet prices were above full costs only 3 years (out of 13). So sugar prices were far too low during that period, in spite of the price floor programs, because the price floors had been reduced to extremely low levels. (No cost data is available for sugarcane.)
Other data comparisons can expand upon this point. For example, the average market price of sugar beets for these same years, (1995-2007) was $64.57 per ton. The average market price for sugar beets for 2008-2022 was even lower, at just $63.72 per ton. Additionally, the average market price for the earlier period when cost data was available was only 42% of parity, but the average market price for the later period was even lower, at just 36% of parity. (Parity figures include the factor of prices paid, [or costs,] for farmers in addition to the prices received.) We should conclude, therefore, that there were probably many more years of below cost market prices for sugar beet farmers during the latter period.
Here we can also compare market prices for sugarcane. During the period when sugar beet prices were usually below the cost of production, the farmers’ sugarcane price averaged $46.12 (in 2023 dollars,) which was an average of just 42% of parity, (the same as for sugar beets). A parallel change also occurred during the latter period, (2008-2022,) when the U.S. farm gate price of sugarcane, (what farmers get,) dropped even lower, to $42.58, or just 35% of parity.
According to the sugar data source used by the Project 2025 chapter on agriculture, “US sugar prices rose to record levels during the first four years of the 2008 bill.” In fact, however, this was completely untrue for what farmers were paid by sugar, (i.e. for the actual impacts of the 2008 farm bill). If we look at USDA data for record prices for farmers the five lowest U.S. market prices for sugarcane, (1909-2022,) were in the twenty-teens. Looking further, all but 2 of the bottom 20 prices occurred since 1998. (The other two were from the 1930s.) This all reflects how low price floors have become.
Record lows for sugar beets, (also 1909-2022,) are similar. The lowest four U.S. market prices for sugar beets were in the twenty-teens. The lowest 21 were all since 1998. Again, the price data correlates closely with the fact that these were also the lowest price floor years. And while the Project 2025 sugar source suggests that wholesale refined sugar prices went up since the 2008 farm bill, (i.e. reflective of what farmers were paid,) the farmer data does not support that at all.
All of this shows that, even with price floors, since the price floors have been too low, the U.S. sugar beet and sugarcane prices, though higher than world price levels, are far too low, resulting in the ongoing subsidization of consumers by sugar farmers. What Project 2025 wants to do is to greatly increase that farmer-paid subsidization. Again, this is a major attack on these U.S. farmers. They give no justification for why farmers should have to subsidize consumers. Meanwhile the giant agribusiness processors, retailers and exporters, unmentioned by these Republicans, lobby for themselves to directly receive increased subsidization by ending the sugar program.
In the end, Project 2025 labels the sugar program as regressive, as hurting the poor. “The program has a regressive effect, since lower-income households spend more of their money to meet food needs compared to higher income households.” Similar arguments are sometimes used against farm subsidies, where calls are made to take money from farm subsidies to give to food subsidies, (Food Stamps/SNAP). Again, why should farmers be singled out as the ones to subsidize the poor.
The argument looks only at farm subsidies, and not at the reduction and elimination of minimum farm price floors, (farm prices and income). That would be like claiming that the inner city poor are rich and powerful, because they receive the bulk of farm bill subsidy money, and that it should be taken away from them and given to the suburbs, (i.e. & also to reward better behavior, as is falsely argued with regard to agriculture and the environment, as discussed farther below).
The same argument applies to all farm subsidies. Because of the larger reductions in minimum farm price floors and the resulting reductions in farm prices and incomes, farmers have long been subsidizing consumers, below full costs, and below a fair price above zero. Related to this, however, USDA’s data on Commodity Costs and Returns generally does not account for farm subsidies. For a while, however, USDA provided costs and returns that did include subsidies, for five crops, (barley, corn, cotton, rice, grain sorghum). Soybeans, which received no subsidies during these years, can be added to this list. What these studies show is that, with subsidies added in, while these crop returns did rise above zero versus full costs on some years, none of the six crops studied did so overall, on average.(I can no longer find these USDA-ERS studies of commodity costs and returns online, but I have them all.)
What the poor really need, is what farmers need, adequate market management. For starters, minimum wage levels should be increased to “living wage” levels. Fair labor laws should also be passed, along with stronger antitrust laws, full employment policies and programs, farm program management programs, and fair trade laws. This would eliminate the need for farm subsidies, and greatly reduce the need and cost for food subsidies and other forms of welfare. Conservatives, in opposing all of these rational market management approaches, (i.e. such as running programs like a business, with supply management, like all big industry groups do,) create a strong need for welfare and subsidy programs, even as their policies and programs subsidize foreign buyers.
It should perhaps also be noted that, as sugar has increasingly been made from corn, giant corn sugar processors like Archer Daniels Midland have lobbied for lowering and ending corn price floors, but also for maintaining sugar price floors, (albeit at a very low level). Here USDA data shows that the market price for corn was below full costs, (as measured by USDA-ERS,) every year 1981-2006, except 1996, and again for seven years in a row, 1914-1920, (which includes the Trump years).
Market Orders: Ending Fruit and Vegetable Farm Programs
Project 2025’s position on the sugar programs is similar to its position on Market Agreements and Market Orders for fruits and vegetables. Author Daren Bakst explains it as follows.
Marketing orders cover research and promotion, but also cover issues such as quality regulations and volume controls. The latter issue, volume controls, is a means to restrict supply, which drives up prices for consumers. Fortunately, there are few active volume controls.
One thing we see, then, is that, like the original New Deal major market management programs for field crops, marketing orders have helped fruit and vegetable farmers get paid fairly, by utilizing “volume controls,” supply management. During the parity years of the New Deal, fruit and vegetable crops, (like the major field crops,) fared quite well, helping farmers to more completely recover from the Great Depression and operate at a more comfortable and more stable level than they had in earlier decades. The programs forced the biggest corporate buyers to pay them fairly, adding up to more than a trillion dollars over the eleven parity years, (adjusted for inflation in 2020 dollars,) compared to averages for 1920-1932. (https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17832) This dramatic change from crisis to economic justice is seen in data for cash receipts, where farmers benefited across the board, including fruit and vegetable farmers, who saw a $308 billion dollar increase. Over all these programs raised farm profitability, as measured by returns on equity and assets, up into the double digits. (Measured simply as net farm income divided by equity or assets, using historical USDA-ERS income and balance sheet data, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-income-and-wealth-statistics/data-files-u-s-and-state-level-farm-income-and-wealth-statistics/. ERS does not itself make these calculations prior to 1960.) This brought these calculations of farm profitability up to levels similar to those for agribusiness categories, which maintained similar profitability as they paid farmers more fairly. (See figures for agribusiness corporations for these years in the Monthly News Letter of the First National City Bank of New York, usually the April edition, various years.)
As I explained for the main field crops, market management was reduced (1953-1995) and ended (1996-2024,) by Congress as demanded by the agribusiness lobby. Very clearly, fruits and vegetables followed the same trend line, faring only slightly better than the major field crops (plus the added subsidies for the latter). So now, field crops have no market management, excepting sugar, while fruits and vegetables still have some weak volume controls through Market Order programs.
Over all, returns on farm equity and assets from current income dropped into the low single digits, (worse for field crop states, even though they have more added subsidies). The scarcity of “active volume controls” was surely a factor in the drop for fruits and vegetables. It’s similar to the reduction of price floor and supply management programs for field crops. The question of consumer prices, as discussed for sugar, applies here as well. Project 2025 continues and seeks to expand long standing Republicans support for having farmers subsidize U.S. and foreign consumers with cheap and below cost farm prices.
More Details Regarding Project 2025’s Call to End PLC and ARC Subsidies
When Crop Revenue Insurance subsidies were introduced in the 2008 farm bill as the ACRE program, (Average Crop Revenue Election,) farmers largely rejected it, and they were right to do so, because it provided few benefits. The Congressional Budget Office reported that, by 2010, only 16.3% of corn farmers, 16.1% of soybean farmers, and 14% of wheat farmers chose it. In spite of this rejection, Republicans emphasized “risk management” options for the 2014 farm bill, not only with crop insurance, but also with the ARC program, (Agricultural Risk Coverage). Like Crop Revenue Insurance, ARC used a floating, relative standard of need, based upon an olympic* year average of market prices, (* 5 earlier years, omitting the highest year and lowest year, then averaged).
Farmers were to choose between this program and the PLC program, (Price Loss Coverage,) which is, in principle, a more rational and efficient “countercyclical” program, where you get more when you need more, and less when you need less. For many crops, especially those grown in the North, the subsidy trigger in PLC was well below the full cost of production. For example, it offered a $3.70 per bushel subsidy trigger for corn, (after which farmers get a subsidy for a limited percent and quantity of how much market prices fell below that level). Meanwhile the full cost of production for 2014 was $4.06. As it turned out, the market price for corn in 2014 started out well above $3.70, and ended up well below it, for an average of exactly that, $3.70. So at the time farmers signed up and made program choices, the prospect was that PLC would pay nothing, in spite of the low price levels.
So, overwhelmingly, farmers signed up for ARC, including 93.% of corn farmers and 96.9% of soybean farmers. But then, because, unlike PLC, ARC had no firm standard of benefits in relation to need, and because of market changes, these farmers got little benefit. For example, corn prices fell to $3.61 in 2015, $3.36 in 2016 and 2017, and $3.61 again in 2018. In spite of these much lower prices, few corn farmers got any ARC subsidies in 2017 or 2018. Such was the irrational nature of the program, like crop revenue insurance, both of which had been widely criticized by agricultural economists. (https://znetwork.org/zblogs/primer-revenue-insurance-in-the-2012-farm-bill-by-brad-wilson/) When the 2018 farm bill offered farmers a chance to change programs, most of them left ARC. So much for irrational conservative Republican thinking, on behalf of their “risk management” “crop insurance” spin needs. So here too, farmers suffered under the conservative approach.
Meanwhile, the PLC subsidy trigger levels were not adjusted for inflation, including in the 2018 farm bill, so by 2024, the corn subsidy trigger, (adjusted for inflation in 2013 dollars, the year the standard was chosen,) had fallen from $3.70 to just $2.81.
What we have, then, is terrible treatment of farmers by the increasingly conservative farm programs that the Agriculture Committees have created. And then, what Project 2025 does is call for totally eliminating even these low benefit, (irrationally constructed,) programs, (another nail in the coffin).
Farm Subsidies: Further Explanation
Project 2025’s chapter on agriculture makes an interesting point with regard to farm subsidies.
...Many farmers receive few to no subsidies, with most subsidies going to only a handful of commodities. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), from 2014 to 2016, 94 percent of farm program support went to just six commodities—corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, soybeans, and wheat—that together account for only 28 percent of farm receipts.
They also single out “fruits and vegetables” as crops that “do not receive much in the way of subsidies.” The report provides no adequate context for this.
As it turns out, if you add together these six crops plus all fruits and vegetables, for example, then the six crops account for about 97% of this total acreage. So that partly addresses concerns about fruits and vegetables not receiving enough subsidies. Additionally, while all crops have been reduced by farm program changes over the past 7 decades, each of the biggest five of these crops, (I didn’t crunch these numbers, over 58 years, for peanuts,) have consistently been reduced in price, more than each of 47 fruits and vegetables, and that’s been true even if you add in the subsidies, (on top of market prices,) ONLY for the five field crops. (Based on percent of parity for each year for each crop, 1953-2010. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/subsidized-crops-vs-vegetables-pt-i/239258118, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/subsidized-crops-vs-fruits-pt-2/239258054.) So the six crops have consistently had a greater need, one that is bigger than the subsidy benefits have provided. Major livestock enterprises, (cattle and dairy,) have also fared better than the five big subsidized crops, as has hay, (as measured by percent of parity, 1981-2005). In these calculations, hog results, (excluding subsidies for hogs,) were almost identical to the major subsidized crops, (including their subsidies). (See a comprehensive presentation of data to address dozens of farm subsidy myths here, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZIOiwv1Nr6jn9SsnE62z1P_hitZKTBaD.)
Likewise, the years 2014 to 2016, used here by Project 2025, seem to have been cherry picked. For example, in 2016, U.S. Net Farm Income was less than 50% of what it had been during the Democratic New Deal parity years of 1942-1952, (mentioned above,) so the need for subsidies was dramatically high. That net farm income figure includes fruits and vegetables, of course. In Iowa, however, where farmers are so dependent upon income from corn and soybeans and little land is devoted to fruits and vegetables, 2016 net farm income was less than 1/3 of the parity years of 1949-1952, (the only parity years for which data is available. Judging from national figures, it would have been less than 1/3 if data was available going back to 1942.)
Further, for these six crops, (corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, soybeans and wheat,) for the years 2014-2016, market income was generally well below full costs, (market net vs. full costs per acre x acres, adjusted for inflation in 2024 dollars,) by nearly $230 billion.(Cost data at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/commodity-costs-and-returns/, acreage data at https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/c534fn92g?locale=en.) At the same time, all commodity crop subsidies for these years, (not just for these crops,) added up to less than $16 billion, far less than the need levels identified above.
As to the claim that receipts for the six crops “together account for only 28 percent of farm receipts,” note that that includes animal products, (about half of cash receipts,) of which the major ones, though their prices have also been greatly reduced, have fared better than the big five subsidized crops plus subsidies for the crops, as shown above. (Cf. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZIOiwv1Nr6jn9SsnE62z1P_hitZKTBaD.) Meanwhile, if you add together cash receipts for the six crops, plus all fruits and vegetables, then the six crops make up 60% of that money, even as they are planted on 97% of that land. The fact that the six crops have low cash receipts should be an indicator of their having a greater, not lesser, need for compensatory subsidies, given the current highly unjust state of farm programs. One additional factor behind all of this is the fact that grains and oilseeds are storable, while fruits and vegetables are perishable. So grains and oilseeds much more easily remain out there as oversupply to drive down prices in subsequent years.
Again, farm subsidies exist based upon the irrational idea that Congress should ignore chronic free market failure and instead pretend that the conservative idea that free markets work for agriculture is true. Maintaining the illusion of conservative economic ideology is the larger context behind why we have farm subsidies, and a major result of it is the exporting of farm products based upon farm level prices that are below the full costs of production, and the same for sales out of farming states, farming communities, and off of farms.
One further farm policy recommendation in Project 2025’s chapter on agriculture is to
Stop paying farmers twice for price and revenue losses during the same year. Farmers can receive support from the ARC or PLC programs and the federal crop insurance program to cover price declines and revenue shortfalls during the same year. Congress should prohibit this duplication by prohibiting farmers from receiving an ARC or PLC payment the same year they receive a crop insurance indemnity.
On its face this is certainly a rational idea. On the other hand, given that farm subsidies have never adequately made up for the larger farm program reductions, especially for the big field crops, and especially, in light of the radical failure of ARC to pay any subsidies at all to the vast majority of farmers during very low price years, the double payments provide some rare, extra assistance to farmers. It’s a question of rational purity versus political realities, as further discussed below. Remember, even with the big emergency subsidies these farmers received under Trump, net farm income remained quite low, including in places like Iowa, where Net Farm Income under Trump, including from subsidies, was less than half of what it was during the parity years of 1949-52. (USDA-ERS, Income and Wealth Statistics)
Political Realities: Additional Points of Clarification and Correction
“Beyond … legislative reforms,” the Project 2025 report calls for “transparency” and “an open process” to be used by the Agriculture Committees in Congress, in general, and “including reform of farm subsidies.” While this makes important practical sense, it may be quite problematic politically, as can be seen in my analysis of Republican farm policies. Clearly, Republicans insist on denying market realities and pretending that major farm markets are “price responsive,” (that “free” markets, or the markets we actually have, work well, as in their ideology). At the same time, given all of their calls, (if not actions,) to reduce government spending, they’d really like to end farm subsidies, as they’ve called for repeatedly, and as Project 2025 partially does. What Republican Agriculture Committee members have learned, with great difficulty, and with inconsistency, is that you can’t do both, and since the subsidization of domestic and multinational agribusiness with below cost farm prices (i.e. paid by farmers,) is the key factor in maintaining funding of their campaigns in these regards, subsidies remain a necessary evil. So it’s little wonder that Republican Agriculture Committee members don’t want to be too open on these matters.
To open this up more broadly to all Republicans in Congress would likely lead to a lot of Republican criticism of farm subsidies, (but not of losing money on farm exports,) even as they’ve succeeded in winning a lot of the farm vote, (as farmers have sunk more deeply into hopelessness about having a just farm bill, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-rural-trump-vote-whos-behind-the-trauma/238966716). It’s just plan bad politics for Republicans to dramatically put very many more nails into the farmer coffin, as they tried to do, so disastrously, with the 1996 farm bill. Their approach has been to cut away at farmer benefits gradually, and then to pour in subsidy money when large crises emerge, (as during the 1980s, the late 1990s, and under Trump).
A second important issue of political reality, one related to my discussion just above, is that of separating the Nutrition Title from the farmer titles of the farm bill. This is a big goal for Project 2025! There is some logic on each side of this. Isn’t Nutrition, with it’s food subsidies, a welfare program that belongs elsewhere? On the other hand, we’ve long had programs to provide surplus food to the poor, coming from the oversupply that drives down farm prices and income. Related to this, I think, is that Conservatives, (including those at Project 2025,) who want to cut food subsidies could better do so if the programs were separated from the farm programs. And on the other side, Republicans, (and others, who generally know nothing of market management and the massive reductions against farmers,) and therefore who want to cut farm subsidies, could better do so if the programs were separate from the Nutrition programs. I think both are likely to be true. Separation would likely lead to major crises on both sides. Many more children would go hungry in the United States, and on the farm side, that could well involve some very final nails in the farmer coffin, all at once, which could greatly hurt the Republican status quo. So, on the farm side, Republican Agriculture Committee members, generally from major farming states, better understand the political realities, even as they sometimes find acting on them to be incongruent to their political philosophies. They’re more politically savvy than Project 2025 when it comes to farm and rural politics.
A third aspect of political reality can be seen in Project 2025’s call to “Address the Abuse of CCC Discretionary Authority.” Here they single out President Trump for criticism, and to a lesser extent, President Biden. The use of this pot of money “changed dramatically during the Trump Administration, when this discretionary authority was used to fund $28 billion in ‘trade aid’ to farmers, consisting primarily of the Market Facilitation Program,” and again in relation to the pandemic. Various kinds of discretionary authority have long been included in the farm bill, which makes sense in light of the kinds of disasters, (affecting the food supply!) that can occur. Trump’s self-made “trade war” crisis was a huge problem for farmers, and therefore for Republicans politically.
The Biden administration is also criticized for using some of this money, (a much smaller amount,) to increase Conservation Title money for sustainable agriculture programs, to address the climate crisis. The climate crisis is much greater in magnitude, however, and much more ominous, even as Biden’s use of discretionary money was much smaller than Trump’s. At the same time, this is a major area of Republican denial in order to benefit large corporations that are causing the crisis, and that fund their campaigns. It has already started toward what will be trillions of dollars in extra costs to our economy. It seems to me that the bottom line here is a massive political failure that is not going away any time soon. So Biden has a strong case in terms of reality, (and including economic reality, not just political reality,) if not with regard to the purity of principles.