Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management, and Trade, today released a new report on the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the USDA’s Market Facilitation Program (MFP).
The MFP was designed to provide assistance to farmers and ranchers with commodities directly impacted by foreign tariffs, resulting in the loss of traditional export markets. The report detailed regional inequities in the distribution of MFP payments, favoring large farmers in Southern states with certain crops over others. The Senators noted that the MFP payments to farmers harmed by the President’s trade turmoil “ultimately created deep regional inequities, favored certain crops over others, and funneled money to large agricultural operations over smaller farms.”
The report found that “cotton producers received 40 percent of the funding at rates 33 times more than the estimated trade damage. Less than 10 percent of funding went to specialty crops, dairy, or hogs and only eight out of hundreds of specialty crops even received payments. The USDA increased the payment limit from $125,000 to $250,000, not to exceed $500,000 per person or legal entity, allowing the largest 10,000 farmers (the top 1.3 percent) to receive $519 million in payments. The top 25 farms received $37 million, 70 percent of which were concentrated in the South.”
“Smaller farmers are moving heaven and earth to supply food to the people in their local communities despite profoundly disrupted markets during the pandemic, with minuscule federal support. We are distressed to learn from the GAO that USDA in 2019 inequitably funneled $14.4 billion to large commodity operations while excluding most specialty crop, dairy and other non-commodity producing farms,” said Rural Coalition Board Member Maria Moreira, who is also Executive Director of World Farmers, Inc. [1]
“In 2020, the farmers we represent have invested the full measure of our resilience and creativity to become a safety net to feed our communities in the midst of this pandemic, at tremendous cost to our own operations,” continued Moreira, herself a farmer. “Congress should redirect market adjustment assistance to help farmers construct a safety net that allows us to feed our most vulnerable communities. Our country needs to invest in us.”
The report’s findings on the inequitable funneling of funds from USDA towards the largest operations further illustrates the urgent need for the restructuring of US food, farm and fish systems. Rural Coalition and over 160 allies on August 31, 2020 sent a letter calling on the US Congress to immediately address this need by filling the gaps earlier pandemic relief packages.
“The coronavirus pandemic compounded and exposed the historic inequities within our food and farming systems. Congress must act now to provide direct relief to small and mid-size farmers that continue to be largely excluded from government market payments, and to all the essential workers in the food system who were also left out,” Moreira concluded.
View the full GAO report here.
The Rural Coalition etal, August 31, 2020 Pandemic Response Letter to Congress can be downloaded here.