The Lacuna Project

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

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Agency

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency

Documented money flows

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • AGR-3.5: In FSA’s calendar-2025 payment files, summed by payee name and address, the top 10 percent of 1,030,230 payees received 64.2 percent of $24.39 billion and the bottom half received 3.6 percent.
  • AGR-3.7: Crop insurance premium subsidies and indemnities have no payment limit and sit outside the actively engaged in farming test. For the programs that apply the test, GAO reported in 2004, 2013 and 2020 that the management standard is broad and that FSA’s compliance reviews were late or not monitored.
  • 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-3.9: In 2019 the Market Facilitation Program paid specialty crops about 2 percent and nonspecialty crops about 94 percent of $14.4 billion. USDA’s 2025 Farmer Bridge Assistance program is $11 billion with $1 billion more available, and its program for specialty crops that the first did not cover is $1.625 billion.
  • AGR-3.10: USDA distributed over $23 billion in Market Facilitation Program payments for 2018 and 2019 to more than 715,000 producers. GAO estimated that 2019 payments to corn producers were about $3 billion more than USDA’s own estimate of trade damage to corn.
  • AGR-3.11: FSA paid $163.4 million of Market Facilitation Program payments to 883 high-income farms and 1,164 farmers with adjusted gross incomes over $900,000, and discontinued its 2019 compliance review. USDA’s inspector general estimated that FSA overpaid 150,313 producers by a total of more than $57.2 million, about 0.25 percent of the $23.18 billion paid.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 649 2025 payments; files posted February 2026. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency: FSA farm program payment files (Name/Address and Payment), payments dated January to December 2025: recipient distribution
  • Exhibit 655 September 2013. U.S. Government Accountability Office: Farm Programs: Changes Are Needed to Eligibility Requirements for Being Actively Involved in Farming (GAO-13-781)
  • Exhibit 656 October 2020. U.S. Government Accountability Office: Farm Programs: USDA Has Improved Its Completion of Eligibility Compliance Reviews, but Additional Oversight Is Needed (GAO-21-95)
  • Exhibit 658 21 August 2020. U.S. Government Accountability Office: USDA Market Facilitation Program: Information on Payments for 2019 (GAO-20-700R)
  • Exhibit 659 January 2022. U.S. Government Accountability Office: USDA Market Facilitation Program: Oversight of Future Supplemental Assistance to Farmers Could Be Improved (GAO-22-104259)
  • Exhibit 661 9 March 2022. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General: Market Facilitation Program, Audit Report 03601-0003-31
  • Exhibit 668 2026 (application closed 17 April 2026). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency: Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program
  • Exhibit 669 2026. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency: Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers (ASCF) Program
  • Exhibit 670 25 April 2023. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency: 2021 PLC, ARC-CO, ARC-IC payments by state and by commodity (as of 25 April 2023)