The GOP farm bill contains no meaningful limitations on subsidy payments to industrialized mega-farms. In fact, the bill raises Farm Service Agency loan caps, making them less available to small, midsize, and beginning farms—and likely better serving larger farms and CAFO operations. The bill also contains loopholes that critics say help those connected to Big Ag to get even more money out of the federal treasury. For instance, the GOP farm bill allows farm owners’ first cousins, nieces, and nephews to qualify for up to $125,000 in commodity subsidies, so long as they earn less than $900,000 in adjusted gross income. While Representative Conaway says this is intended to keep family farms intact across generations, groups including The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and Taxpayers for Common Sense have criticized this proposal for its potential to pave the way for America’s largest farms to rake in virtually unlimited subsidies. “The proposal would not provide an adequate safety net for farmers and ranchers who have seen a significant drop in net farm income over the past five years,” said a spokesperson for the National Farmers Union.

The House bill doesn’t make any changes to crop insurance in order to help beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers access assistance. “It creates more loopholes in subsidy payments that will continue to distort land prices and create an unfair playing field for farmers,” Hackney of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said. The new bill also fails to remove barriers to conservation and stewardship activities within the federal crop insurance program, which discourages farmers from engaging in conservation practices such as cover crops by threatening penalties or the voiding of their coverage.

Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director for Friends of the Earth’s Food and Agriculture program, in an op-ed called the bill “Robin Hood in reverse”—taking from small-scale farmers and low-income families to further enrich agribusiness, factory farms, and crop insurance companies.” She wrote, “Limitless subsidies to mega-farms proposed in this bill will drive land costs up, small farmers out, and result in increased concentration in the agricultural sector.”

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