Farmers Aren’t Getting The Farm Bill Money You Think They Are (Ep. 379)

“It’s no different than when people say, “Oh, well, what about the Farm Bill?” Well, let’s look at the Farm Bill. Out of $129.6 billion in the Farm Bill, $27.9 billion goes to farmers, directly to farmers. That’s the number I’ve been using this whole time. $101.7 billion is gonna go to SNAP. That’s the food program. That is food stamps. So a lot of people think farmers are getting $129.6 billion because that’s the Farm Bill. That’s not what farmers are getting. They’re getting $27.9 billion. The rest of it is going to food stamps, to the SNAP program. Put that into perspective as well.”

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. Before I get into this topic, which is very fragile, before I get there, let’s talk about the client-only summit. We have the Black Sheep Summit coming up in January. If you are a client and you’ve gotten an email, go get registered. The deadline is the end of November, so you only have 30 days for the early bird special before that all runs out. So go ahead, get registered for that. You got an email. If you did not get an email, make sure that you let us know, and make sure you’ve not opted out of emails. Some of you are opting out. Well, if you opt out, then we can’t email you. That’s kind of how that works. Anyway.

All right. Today I wanna talk about farm subsidies, because I saw this comment on one of my social media things, and I really just kind of get tired of it and the thought process that people have, and so I’m bringing it up. And, you know, some of you could get mad at me. I don’t really care. We’re just talking about numbers. I don’t care if you take a subsidy or don’t take a subsidy. Either way, it does not matter to me. I don’t frankly care. The government’s gonna take our money. I used to be a big believer of “I’m never taking anything from the government,” and they’re taking my money either way, and they’re redistributing it, and I don’t like that.

Am I taking government subsidies? Absolutely not. I don’t want their hands in anything that I do, but if you’re taking them, I don’t care. However, I am really, really sick and tired of people saying farmers are the only businesses that get money every single year. No, they are not the only businesses that get money every single year.

So I’ve done a little research with ChatGPT to tell me some stuff, and so I wanna share it with you, because I think that we need to start putting it into perspective. First of all, what is a government subsidy? I asked, and it is a direct payment that the government can give you. It’s a grant that you can get from the government. It’s tax breaks. It’s price support. It’s subsidized loans, or it’s operating subsidies. Okay? We are all getting tax credits. But let’s talk about who’s… if we’re gonna compare, compare to what? Again, just put away the fact that you like it or don’t like it. Let’s just look at the facts of who else is getting subsidies.

And that is airline companies. The smaller community airline companies are getting subsidized every single year. The passenger rails are getting subsidized. Public transit operators, buses, those sort of things are gonna have subsidies. Affordable housing: for landlords, if you build affordable housing, which in the real estate world, there are people that that’s all they do is affordable housing so that they can get these subsidies. Childcare providers have subsidies. Energy producers, electricity production and qualifying energy products. You’re gonna see your wind towers are subsidized. You’re going to see that your solar panel stuff is subsidized. Rural telecommunication companies, hospitals, and farmers and ranchers. Farmers and ranchers are not the only ones getting subsidized.

So I went one step further, because somebody’s gonna say, “Well, they get more money than everybody else.” So let’s dig into that, and let’s see. Now, of course, you guys see me looking off to the side, ’cause that’s where I have all my notes, and I’m coming to you from my office today, ’cause frankly, I was too lazy to go set up my podcast room to record this, and I have it all right here.

So I asked, how much money goes back to taxpayers for child and dependent tax credits? Because remember, a subsidy can also be tax credits. Nelson used to talk about this all the time. He’s like, “If you don’t want any tax money and you want to be void of the government, then stop taking your mortgage tax credit.” So let’s look at all this. If farmers are going to get a government payment for disaster relief or for drought relief or whatever, hurricanes going through, whatever, the government’s going to pay those out, and they do pay them out every year, because there’s a disaster somewhere around the country every single year, okay? It’s not necessarily the same farmer, and if it is the same farmer, it’s because there was a disaster every year. So then it looks like they’re getting those payments every year.

So let’s just look at child and dependent tax credits. If you’re somebody that says a farmer shouldn’t take a payment, then you have to check yourself and say, “Should I take a child tax credit?” $99 billion a year goes to child and dependent tax credits. That was in 2025. Direct farm payments are $27.9 billion. Direct farm payments going to the farmer for disaster relief. Child tax credits are $99 billion. Mortgage interest deduction credits: if you have a mortgage, you can deduct the interest. That’s $52.6 billion. More than farmers. Child tax credits, more than farmers.

Student loans. Student grants, college student grants, $40.9 billion. Student loan forgiveness approved over the last four years, $188.8 billion. Farmers are at 27.9, and student loans are at, over the last four years, $188.8 billion. Now granted, that’s not every single year, but that’s over the last four years. Student grants every year are $40.9 billion, more than farmers. Some people are gonna say, “Well, that’s educating our children.” Are we? Of that $40.9 billion, how much of that is drank away for partying? How many people actually have a better job? Hmm. I’m not saying it’s wasted money on every child, but if we want to educate our children, and we want to feed people, or we want to have ethanol gas… I didn’t even ask how many subsidies go to the ethanol plants so that we can have ethanol gas, so everybody has cheaper fuel. Better fuel? Depends who you talk to. Cheaper fuel? Yeah.

So I kept going, and I thought, “Well, how about Medicaid? How much money are the hospitals receiving?” $15 billion for disproportionate share hospital payments. These payments help hospitals cover costs associated with Medicare patients and uninsured individuals. They are part of a reoccurring program. $15 billion. That was in 2024. $39 billion to supplement ordinary Medicare, Medicaid payments. $25 billion, that is a new program offering direct financial assistance to eligible small rural hospitals to help maintain essential services. So the hospitals are getting $15 billion, $39 billion, and $25 million. $25 million is pretty small.

Then I said, “Well, what about nursing homes? What about all the people on Medicaid in the nursing homes? Isn’t that a subsidy?” Because it is our tax dollars going to pay the nursing homes to take care of the elderly in our communities. $136 billion, 59.2% of total US nursing home spending, according to the Congressional Research Service. I said then, “How many nursing home residents are government-funded?” This was, and I don’t know why it was shocking, 63% of people in the nursing home are on Medicaid. 63%. 14% on Medicare, so Medicare will pay for X amount of days, and then Medicaid kicks in. 23% are private.

So as we’re sitting here saying farmers are taking all of this money every single year to keep their business alive, other companies and other businesses are doing the exact same thing. I have yet to hear anybody complain about the nursing homes taking $136 billion a year to make sure that that business survives. That business needs to survive to take care of our elderly people. Farming needs to survive for the reasons I just mentioned: food, feed for cattle, fuel.

All of these things need to survive, and we are subsidizing all of that one way, shape, or form. We are subsidizing the people with children to have them in a daycare. We’re subsidizing them by giving them tax dollars because they have children. We’re subsidizing homeowners by giving them tax credits so that they can get some of their mortgage interest back. These are incentives, but you can’t separate one from another. If you hate… as Nelson said, if you don’t like the government, then it’s all or nothing. You can’t complain about farmers and take a student loan write-off. Have one of your kids go get a grant for student loans. Have somebody in the nursing home on Medicaid. Take your mortgage deduction. You can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth.

And when he said that, I had to check myself, because I take the mortgage deduction. It is there, right? We can uncheck the box and say, “No, no, I don’t want that. Let the government take more taxes from me.” We don’t have to do that. I don’t have to take any of the tax incentives that I take, but I take them because they’re there, and that’s how the tax code is written. Farmers are getting them, and a lot of times they’re getting them… Sometimes they have to apply for them. If they don’t apply, they’re not getting any. Sometimes they don’t have to apply. If they’ve already got a loan or something, FSA may apply on their behalf, and just all of a sudden they get a check in the mail. Okay?

Yes, there’s money that goes to farmers, but there is also a disaster everywhere all the time. I did not look up how much hurricane relief there is, because businesses are still gonna get help during hurricanes, right? Not all businesses, not all things. And the smaller you are, the less help you’re gonna get. Farmers are a small percentage of the population. People with children are much higher. Elderly people are much higher. So then we have more dollars there. But we can’t necessarily just pick on one group of people and reiterate something that we’ve heard but don’t think about.

That’s like saying whole life insurance is bad, but we don’t know why whole life insurance is bad. We don’t actually have the numbers. We’re just saying something we’ve already heard, and we’re being parrots. That’s not what we want to be. As Nelson said, we don’t want to have the arrival syndrome. We don’t want to stop learning, and there’s really no reason in today’s world to stop learning. We have all this information at our fingertips. It doesn’t mean all the information’s correct, but we have all the information at our fingertips to create some thought process around what we’re doing. So like the subsidies or not, I frankly don’t care. But here are the numbers. We’re all taking something in one way, shape, or form.

Ideally, we would have no subsidies. In the perfect world, there would be no government subsidies, which would mean they can’t take money from us to give back to you. If they quit taking money from us to give back to you, it would be fantastic. We would all go back to the old system where everybody helped everybody. But that’s not the case. They just keep taking more, which then starts making people angry. So we should look at where is it all going.

It’s no different than when people say, “Oh, well, what about the Farm Bill?” Well, let’s look at the Farm Bill, ’cause I actually pulled that up. Okay, out of $129.6 billion in the Farm Bill, $27.9 billion goes to farmers, directly to farmers. That’s the number I’ve been using this whole time. $101.7 billion is gonna go to SNAP. That’s the food program. That is food stamps. So a lot of people think farmers are getting $129.6 billion because that’s the Farm Bill. That’s not what farmers are getting. They’re getting $27.9 billion. The rest of it is going to food stamps, to the SNAP program. So put that into perspective as well. When you tell me, or maybe throughout this podcast you’re like, “Well, Mary Jo, your 27.9 is a lie.” No. No, it’s not, according to the Economic Research… whatever. Do your own research on it instead of just being a parrot and being mad and going online and commenting stupid shit.

That’s it. That’s all I had today, was a little bit of German passion, ’cause you guys probably haven’t seen it in a while. So, you know, time to break it up, give you a little spice in your life. All right, you guys. You let me know if you have comments. I’m sure you will. I’m sure there will be plenty of comments comparing, telling me it’s not right. By all means, drive my algorithm. I would appreciate it. All right. You guys let us know if we can help. maryjo@withoutthebank.com, john@withoutthebank.com. Get your book, read it, schedule your appointment, and then we can talk about how that helps you. You have a fantastic rest of your day.