Farm Groups Seek to Lift Cap on Coronavirus Bailout Payments

Farm groups and their allies in Congress are pressing the Trump administration to lift limits on payments to individual producers under a $19 billion coronavirus bailout plan.

That would reverse the practice of limiting taxpayer assistance to large farms under ordinary federal agricultural subsidies and the administration’s $28 billion trade bailout. Producer groups argue that the economic blow from the pandemic is so severe that large operators will be devastated without full access to aid.

Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, and Representative Jimmy Panetta, a California Democrat, led 126 U.S. House members and 28 senators in letters urging the U.S. Agriculture Department to drop caps on bailout payments that they said would “severely restrict the program’s effectiveness.”

An initial USDA proposal for the rescue package included an individual payment limit of $125,000 per product category or $250,000 overall per person.

Trump’s trade bailout and other farm subsidy programs have come under criticism for concentrating benefits on larger operations. Many farms reduce the impact of payment limits by including relatives in the ownership structure.

Scott Faber, a senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said the effort showed “greed has no limits.”

“Under Trump’s first bailout, several farmers collected more than $2 million and 6,000 farmers got more than $300,000 -- while the bottom 80% of farmers, the farmers who were actually facing financial ruin, got about $7,000,” Faber said. “Now, the same people want to lift the payment limits to the biggest guys.”

Pork Damage

But Rachel Gantz, a spokeswoman for the National Pork Producers Council, said the $1.6 billion the administration has allocated for hog farmers won’t come close to covering the losses in a sector that has seen prices plummet and is now reeling from the impact of slaughterhouse shutdowns.

Read More: Meat Threat Widens With New Shutdowns From Brazil to Minnesota

The payment limit “leaves many of our producers behind -- those who have made major investments in hogs -- and will do long-term damage to a pork production system that is the envy of the world if not addressed soon,” Gantz said.

Ethan Lane, vice president for government affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the cap “will prevent many operations, large and small, from receiving enough assistance.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net

James Attwood, Steven Frank

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