“The subsidies are not an emergency safety net for poor farm families but rather permanent welfare for high-earning businesses,” Chris Edwards, an editor at the Cato Institute, wrote in the blog post. “The government often calls crop insurance ‘market based’ but that cannot be true because the program costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year.” Edwards added that because there are no income limits on crop insurance, the top 10% of farmers capture 56% of all subsidies in the program.
That growth has drawn critics, like Edwards, who argues the program benefits insurers as much as it does farmers. “The crop insurance program is like the government giving you $900 a year for your $1,500 car insurance premium, all while paying billions of dollars to GEICO, State Farm, and other insurance firms to boost their profits,” Edwards wrote.
