Download: Political Power of Farm and Crop Insurance Lobbies Fact Sheet
The so-called Farm Bill currently being negotiated in Congress is shaping up to be another taxpayer-funded handout to wealthy landowners, agribusinesses, and the crop insurance industry. Held up as a safety net for mom-and-pop farms, current agriculture policy is a glaring example of corporate welfare, wasting billions of tax dollars every year. Even though lawmakers have thankfully agreed to eliminate direct payments, one of the most costly and outdated subsidies, they are failing to reject the agribusiness and crop insurance lobbies’ demands for new and potentially just-as-costly income guarantee subsidies. The proposed policies will not only benefit farmers who pay little or nothing for their own insurance policies but also crop insurance companies receiving subsidies to carry out various crop insurance and shallow loss programs. Congress’ failure to eliminate agricultural entitlement programs during a time of record national debt and farm profits is a testament to the power of the agribusiness and crop insurance lobbies.
Lobbying Power
Agribusiness and crop insurance interests spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress and various federal government agencies each year.1 They spent $95 million last year – more than $261,000 per day – and also fielded 840 lobbyists, more than one for each member of Congress. And their lobbyists are no strangers to Washington, DC, given the fact that one out of every two previously worked on Capitol Hill or in federal government. One even wrote the 2002 farm bill as Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee from 1999 to 2003. Larry Combest, a former Republican Congressman from Texas, and two of his former committee staff members now lobby for groups that bring home billions in subsidies annually, like the Crop Insurance Professional Association, American Sugar Alliance, USA Rice Federation, Western Peanut Growers Association, and Cotton Warehouse Association. Since 2006, these types of well-connected groups have spent over a half billion dollars lobbying, or more than $1 for every taxpayer dollar spent on subsidies and other programs in the Farm Bill. Below, note that lobbying ramps up in years leading up to Farm Bill deliberations (before 2008 and 2012).
Read the full fact sheet: Political Power of the Agribusiness and Crop Insurance Lobbies
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