Farm Bill Resource Center : Subsidies

Congress should direct the Department of Agriculture to use COVID-19 relief funds to ensure that farmworkers –not big farmers – have protections, free testing and paid sick leave.

Last week, the Department of Agriculture announced a new round of cash payments to farmers to ease their losses from President Trump’s trade war with China, which has cut off many growers from their biggest market. Perhaps feeling the sting of Senate Democrats’ blistering rebuke of gross inequities in the so-called Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, the president tweeted: “The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries.”