Farmers receive significant government funds primarily to stabilize the food supply, manage extreme financial risks from volatile markets and weather, and support rural economies. These subsidies, often originating from 1930s-era policies, help maintain farm operations during low-price periods, with over $9 billion in subsidies paid in 2024 for commodities like corn, soybeans, and cotton.
Between 1985 and 2024, farm subsidy programs paid farmers when crop prices fell below price guarantees set in the farm bill or when crop revenues fell below averages. Between 1996 and 2014, farmers also received “direct” subsidy payments linked to historic crop production.
In 2021, more than 34 percent of U.S. farm households received Government payments. Totaling $14.3 billion, these payments went to farms of three types.
Farm Household Wealth and Income
Farm operator households have more wealth than the average U.S. household because significant capital assets, such as farmland and equipment, are generally necessary to operate a successful farm business.
Government support for Canadian agriculture is around 8.2 per cent of gross farm receipts, says the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's slightly higher than the United States but less than the average agricultural subsidies of 13.2 per cent in the OECD, a group with 38 member countries.
Farm subsidies provided by the federal government are supposed to help agricultural producers manage the variations in agricultural production and profitability from year to year - due to variations in weather, market prices, and other factors - while ensuring a stable food supply.
That organization calculated Canada's direct subsidies to oil and gas at $2 billion in 2023, but also calculated the costs associated with oil and gas impacts at $36 billion, for a total subsidy calculation of $38 billion.
The U.S. farm program pays subsidies to farmers not to grow crops in environmentally sensitive areas and makes payments to farmers based on what they have grown historically, even though they may no longer grow that crop.
Farm subsidies are intended to be consumer-friendly and taxpayer-friendly. Instead, they cost Americans billions each year in higher taxes and higher food costs.
As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program to cope with the impact of the Great Depression, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) in 1933 and created the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).
An individual farmer can get more than $280,000 a year from the government — money for just being a farmer, money for bad market conditions, money for not making an income on the crop, and money for taking land out of production.
And while real estate values for farmland keep climbing, the actual income farmers earn from their land struggles to keep pace. The reasons? Rising costs of seed, feed, fertilizer, energy, and water.
Subsidies mostly support wealthy farmers
(See Figure 2.) So this near-record amount of farm subsidies was distributed at a time when crop prices and farm incomes were at an all-time high and many farmers did not need the support for their farms to survive. Farm income was the highest ever in 2022 at $196.4 billion.
Robert Andjelic is Canada's largest farmland owner. He sees huge potential for the agriculture sector – if Canada doesn't mess up a once-in-a-century opportunity.
Raw land is a physical, hard asset—something you can physically possess and utilize. Regardless of market fluctuations, land remains a tangible form of wealth. Even when values shift, raw land has intrinsic value and potential utility, from agriculture to future development.
For example, in an effort to reduce agricultural surpluses, the government paid farmers to reduce crop production and to sell pregnant sows as well as young pigs.
The largest U.S. farm subsidy recipients often include large agricultural corporations like Riceland Foods Inc. and Producers Rice Mill, alongside government entities such as the Farm Services Agency, with significant funds also going to large farms growing commodity crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice, as well as wealthy individuals, foundations, and land management trusts. Recipients vary by program, but data from 1995-2024 shows major payouts to large commodity producers and entities like the Montana Dept. of Natural Resources & Conservation, highlighting that large-scale operations and non-traditional farm entities receive substantial aid.
For most of the country, farmers face a difficult farm economy – as crop prices continue to decline and production expenses remain high. Strong yields provide little relief and imbalance in the market has driven profit margins to the point where breaking even is unachievable.
In 2022, Canada's per capita emissions: were the second highest among the top 10 total emitting countries and regions, where Canada produced 17.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per person (t CO2 eq) decreased by 16.1% since 2005, from 21.29 to 17.86 t CO2 eq per person.
In 2019–21 about 20% of gross farm income was government support, mostly market price support, particularly for potatoes, wheat, sunflower seed and beef.