Anne Schechinger explores agriculture’s impact on the environment and analyzes how government policies can reduce agricultural pollution. As an undergraduate, Schechinger researched the economics of natural resource valuation. In graduate school, she studied the commercial feasibility of growing environmentally sustainable crops.
A lot of that money will end up going to practices that don’t actually have proven climate benefits. There’s not a lot outside of these federal programs that are going to help farmers reduce their emissions. So if this money isn’t going to the right practices, then agriculture as a whole in the United States is not going to reduce their emissions.
[Higher coverage levels were] already highly subsidized and are very expensive for taxpayers. Because they are the largest coverage levels available, the total dollar amounts of subsidy for these policies [are] already often very large.
Non-IRA, traditional farm bill EQIP money already funds these practices. So USDA could study the practices funded through that source of money to evaluate if they have climate benefits, without sending them funding from the IRA that is only supposed to go to practices that reduce emissions or sequester carbon in soil.
This tells a compelling story, across all of these things. It’s a clear picture that these larger farms are doing the best and are benefitting the most from government policies.
This part about the money going to agents and companies is especially important because that’s billions of dollars every year not going to farmers.
There's nothing wrong with the USDA testing these practices this year and seeing if they can quantify how much they reduce emissions, if at all. But we just don't think the IRA money should be going to them until they have proven emissions benefits.
Only 20% of farms in the U.S. actually participate in the crop insurance program. The majority of crop insurance money goes to just four main crops: corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. And a lot of the money — 65% —goes to the farmers in just 10 states.
Farmers don’t need more sources of revenue. They’re already getting subsidies and crop insurance, not to mention we have high farm incomes generally.
