The Lacuna Project

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

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Exhibit 649

FSA farm program payment files (Name/Address and Payment), payments dated January to December 2025: recipient distribution

Exhibit 649 · Dataset query

FSA farm program payment files (Name/Address and Payment), payments dated January to December 2025: recipient distribution

Source: eleven Excel files for payment year 2025 (for example state al-id.foia_.na_.pmt25.final_.dt25365.xlsx), downloaded 9 November 2026. Fields: payee name and address, disbursement amount, payment date, accounting program code and description, program year; no customer number. Query: all 4,063,479 payment lines in all states and territories, summed by payee (name, street address, ZIP). Result: $24.386 billion to 1,030,230 payees with positive net receipts; mean $23,671, median $4,866. The top 10 percent of payees (at least $58,929 each) received 64.2 percent of dollars; the top 1 percent (at least $270,885) received 20.3 percent; the bottom 50 percent received 3.6 percent. For ARC and PLC alone ($2.12 billion, 313,603 payees) the top 10 percent received 65.0 percent; for the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program ($9.36 billion, 578,815 payees) 54.8 percent. Payees are not farms: an operation paid under several names or addresses is counted separately, and pass-through entities are not looked through, so concentration among operations is understated. The FSA file total ($24.39 billion) does not equal ERS's calendar-2025 direct payments ($27.89 billion); the difference is not reconciled.

Source
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency
Date
2025 payments; files posted February 2026
Grade
Primary record
Document
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/tools/informational/freedom-information-act-foia/electronic-reading-room/frequently-requested/payment-files
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
Individuals' names are not recorded in project notes and are not to be published; only aggregates.

Cited by

Finding AGR-3.5
Primary record 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.