The 2025 harvest season finds many U.S. farmers in a tough bind. Export markets remain weakened after prolonged trade conflicts and tariffs, especially under recent Trump Administration policies. Prices for key commodities such as soybeans and corn have fallen sharply. In response, political pressure is mounting to approve yet another round of federal payments. But agricultural economists and historians warn that continued reliance on subsidies could entrench systemic problems, not solve them.

Recent policy actions-like the $10 billion Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP) and the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" signed by President Trump in July-have brought total farm payments since 2018 to nearly $176 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, with an average of $15.5 billion per year in ad hoc or supplemental assistance. Despite these massive outlays, the core challenge of chronic oversupply and demand disruptions remains unresolved.

Historically, when export demand declines, as happened post-WWI, in the 1970s, and after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the U.S. government often stepped in with payment programs. While such efforts aim to stabilize incomes, experts like Jonathan Coppess and Otto Doering argue they often worsen land price inflation, distort input markets, and create entry barriers for young and small-scale farmers. Payments tend to be capitalized into land values, increasing costs and reinforcing the dominance of large-scale farms.

Moreover, policies tying payments to planted acres or farm size often work against sustainability goals. Input costs like seed and fertilizer remain high due to artificially elevated demand, while payment-based policies can stifle innovation and adaptation to market conditions. This creates a cycle of rising costs, flat or falling prices, and recurring bailouts that benefits agribusiness suppliers more than working farmers.

History offers cautionary tales. The 1920s and 1970s saw huge acreage expansions driven by export booms, followed by severe contractions and widespread farm bankruptcies when demand fell. Policy attempts to reduce planted acres through programs like the 1956 Soil Bank, 1983 PIK Program, and later the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) had mixed results. Only conservation-linked reductions, like the CRP established in 1985, have offered meaningful acreage buffers without triggering perverse incentives.

Today, as the CRP itself nears expiration without reauthorization, the risk of losing that buffer looms large. Current policies, including a crop insurance system that is increasingly over-insuring high-risk crops, may be locking farmers into unsustainable rotations while leaving early-career farmers without support.

Despite high total payments, income inequality within agriculture has worsened. Large operators capture most subsidies while small, diversified, or conservation-focused farms struggle to compete. Payments alone cannot fix structural oversupply or restore lost demand. The U.S. exported $176 billion in ag products in 2024, with $24.6 billion in soybeans. Losing major markets like China to Brazil-amid ongoing tariffs-cannot be offset by payments.

The authors urge policymakers to resist the quick fix of checks and instead focus on reducing input costs, diversifying markets, and rebuilding conservation-based programs that give farmers tools-not just cash-to adapt. Allowing prices to crash and farms to fail is politically unthinkable, but simply throwing money at the problem risks paying farmers to maintain broken systems. Structural reforms, not subsidies, may be the better path forward.