Farm subsidies (NPR)

NPR interviewed Senior Research Fellow Joseph Glauber on farm subsidies that are part of the COVID-19 relief bill. Glauber finds the subsidies a little disturbing because by the time farmers got a bunch of those payments in the summer and fall the problems were going away. “”You almost lose track of how much money is going out.” According to USDA estimates, total farm income this year without that emergency aid would have been about average with the government payments. In 2020, it looks like it’ll be the fifth highest year for farm income in the past forty-five years.”  Final figures aren’t yet available, but based on previous years, it’s likely that most of the money went to fewer than 100,000 farms. “I think there is a fundamental question: Why are we providing all this additional aid?” Glauber says.  Republished radio interview ran on WPLN (Nashville), WVXU (Cincinnati), WMFE (Orlando), WRKF (Baton Rouge), KERA-FM (Dallas), KVPR (Sacramento), WNYC-FM (New York), KRCC- FM (Colorado Springs), WCMU-FM (Flint, MI), WABC (Atlanta) and more than two hundred other major U.S. outlets.