Brown, Grassley Introduce Bill to Target Farm Payments to Working Family Farms

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) today announced that they introduced bipartisan legislation to rein in abuse of the farm payment system and ensure taxpayer support is targeted to those actively engaged in farming. The Farm Program Integrity Act would create a hard cap of $250,000 per year in total commodity support for any one farm operation and require subsidy recipients to be working farmers that spend half the year actively engaged in farm operations. Currently, just 10 percent of farms receive 70 percent of farm payment subsidies.

“For years we’ve seen big farms get bigger while small and mid-sized family farmers in Ohio get squeezed,” Brown said. “Too often, farm subsidy payments go to those who don’t need the support or aren’t even engaged in farming. With this commonsense bill we can ensure assistance is directed toward working Ohio farmers who need the support.”

Source: senate.gov