The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Agency

USDA Economic Research Service

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • AGR-3.1: ERS reports $27.9 billion in direct government payments to farm operations in 2025 and forecasts $47.4 billion for 2026, the largest nominal total in its series, which begins in 1933. The payments were 7.9 percent of net farm income in 2024 and are forecast at 29.9 percent in 2026.
  • AGR-3.2: From 2003 through 2011 USDA paid more than $46 billion in direct payments based on historical acreage and production, and $10.6 billion of it went to producers who did not grow the associated crop in the payment year.
  • AGR-3.6: ERS reports that farms with at least $1 million in gross cash farm income received nearly 11 percent of commodity program payments in 1991 and 34 percent in 2015, and describes the shift as similar to the shift in production value.
  • AGR-3.8: In 2024 nine program crops received 84 percent of crop insurance premium subsidy and fruit, vegetable and tree-nut crops 7 percent, while the two groups made up 56 percent and 23 percent of crop cash receipts. FSA’s table of 2021 ARC and PLC payments lists no fruit or vegetable.
  • AGR-3.12: P.L. 119-21 (4 July 2025) set higher statutory reference prices from crop year 2025, allocated up to 30,000,000 additional base acres, raised the payment limit from $125,000 to $155,000 with inflation indexing, and defined partnerships, S corporations and LLCs as qualified pass-through entities. It also raised the premium subsidy for area-based crop insurance coverage from 65 to 80 percent and raised five other premium support rates by 3 to 5 percentage points.
  • AGR-3.14: Economists, including one at ERS, found that farm subsidies had modest and mixed effects on commodity prices and negligible effects on consumer food prices, and attributed growth in high fructose corn syrup use to sugar import policy more than to corn subsidies. ERS reports that the farm share of each dollar spent on domestically produced food was 11.8 cents in 2024.
  • AGR-3.16: No public USDA or GAO tabulation combines direct payments, crop insurance premium subsidies, indemnities and ad hoc aid by recipient decile or by crop group.
  • AGR-5.1: USDA data show that the four largest packers' share of steer and heifer slaughter rose from 36 percent in 1980 to 85 percent in 2019, and their share of hog slaughter rose from 34 percent to 67 percent. In 2019 the four largest firms held 53 percent of broiler chicken and 55 percent of turkey production.
  • AGR-5.2: USDA's Economic Research Service attributes the rise in beef and pork packing concentration mostly to larger plants and says mergers played a limited role. ERS also reports that the farm-to-wholesale beef price spread doubled between 2015 and 2019. GAO estimated that fed cattle prices in 2013 to 2015 may have been about 9 percent higher in areas with less packer concentration than in areas with more, and stated that this evidence alone does not imply anticompetitive or improper behavior.
  • AGR-5.4: Pilgrim's Pride pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for broiler chicken products and was sentenced to a criminal fine of $107,923,572 on February 23, 2021. ERS reports that individual defendants in the DOJ broiler cases were acquitted in jury trials. Tyson's filing states that the first civil broiler antitrust jury trial ended in a verdict for the defendants.
  • AGR-5.10: Two seed companies accounted for 72 percent of planted U.S. corn acres and 66 percent of soybean acres in 2018-20. USDA's 2023 seed competition report counts Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and BASF as owning 95 percent of corn, 84 percent of soybean and 74 percent of cotton plant intellectual property.
  • AGR-5.11: In 2017 and 2018 antitrust agencies cleared ChemChina-Syngenta, Dow-DuPont and Bayer-Monsanto only with divestitures. DOJ called the roughly $9 billion Bayer divestiture to BASF the largest merger divestiture ever required by the United States.
  • AGR-5.13: The average price farmers paid for seed rose 270 percent from 1990 to 2020, against 56 percent for commodity prices and 463 percent for crops grown mostly with genetically modified traits. ERS states that the evidence is mixed on whether concentration caused the rise.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 608 June 2023. USDA Economic Research Service (MacDonald, Dong and Fuglie): Concentration and Competition in U.S. Agribusiness (Economic Information Bulletin 256)
  • Exhibit 647 3 September 2026. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: Farm Income and Wealth Statistics, data files, September 3, 2026 release (government payments by program, 1933 to 2026 forecast)
  • Exhibit 648 3 September 2026. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: Webinar Transcript: Farm Income and Financial Forecasts, September 2026 Update
  • Exhibit 667 November 2017. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: The Evolving Distribution of Payments From Commodity, Conservation, and Federal Crop Insurance Programs (Economic Information Bulletin 184)
  • Exhibit 672 2026 update (2024 data). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: Food Dollar: Summary Findings (2024 data)