A new EWG study confirms what had already been reported: The aid program Donald Trump's team scurried to put in place after Trump's trade wars suddenly left American farmers without buyers for their crops has largely been sucked up by corporate megafarms. Small farms, the ones most in jeopardy from the sudden loss of fought-for markets, are only getting the scraps.
According to the study, more than half of the aid provided by Team Trump's "Market Facilitation Program" has gone to the top 10% of recipients. 82 farms have gotten $500,000 or more; the largest farm has received $2.8 million.
The bottom 80% of aid recipients? They got less than $5,000, on average. That is ... not much.
This is not particularly surprising. The ironclad hold of mega-farms on the nation's food supply, both in the markets and in government, is well-known. But the study notes that the Trump administration has done several things to further encourage payments to the topmost tier. They "chose to apply rules that allow relatives who do not contribute meaningful work on the farm to receive farm payments," which has allowed many of the richest farms to dodge the supposed per-farm $125,000 cap by spreading payments to non-farming family members. And in the second round of funding, Trump Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced that payments would now be based on the acres planted, not (as before) the actual volume produced. That makes the relationship between farm size and aid provided even more explicit.
The study also notes that with the new programs, government farm subsidies are in danger of exceeding World Trade Organization caps on such assistance.
(The United States has been, of course, a vocal opponent of unfair subsidies meant to prop up other nations' agriculture and industries.) That could in turn subject United States farmers to further international retaliation—and, presumably, another round of aid to the very largest farms, while smaller farms are left to muddle through on their own.