Project 2025 farm policy hurts farmers

The candidacy of Donald Trump and the long, detailed Republican Project 2025 report have been criticized as an authoritarian attack on Democracy.

The report includes a chapter on USDA and farm programs, which calls for an end to Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage farm subsidy programs, the sugar beet and sugarcane programs, the Conservation Reserve program, and the Conservation Compliance provisions of farm programs. It also opposes the use of descretionary Commodity Credit Corporation money for emergency subsidies, like President Trump did during his trade war with China and the pandemic, and like Biden did to help address climate change.

Strangely, it calls for keeping Crop Revenue Insurance premium subsidies, though with the subsidies reduced from 60% to the 40% to 50% range. It includes no cuts for the parallel subsidies to insurance companies. These subsidies were championed by conservatives after they received massive criticism for “decoupled” subsidies, given whether you need them or not, which they had spun as compliant with free trade agreements. Revenue Insurance and ARC are spun as “risk management,” but ARC failed when corn prices dropped to $3.36 in 2017, and almost no ARC subsidies were given.

Though “parity” and conservation were central in the original farm bill, Project 2025 rejects USDA treatment of equity and the environment as not original.

Project 2025 calls for “defending farmers,” proclaiming that farmers have been “flourishing.” In contrast, I’m reminded of earlier reports that called for eliminating a third of farmers within five years.

Brad Wilson

Springville