Farm Support Tops $950 Billion Across 56 Countries

PARIS, France — International agricultural economists have identified a pattern in government policy that holds across continents: politicians would rather spend billions rescuing struggling farmers than build the conditions under which those farmers might actually make money.

The OECD’s Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation report estimates that agricultural support across 56 countries exceeded $950 billion in the latest year measured.

The report also identifies more than 30 emergency responses to natural disasters and extreme weather over the same period, while warning that longer-term investment in agricultural productivity is failing to keep pace. In government terminology, this constitutes progress. In farming terminology, it resembles buying a drowning man a very expensive towel.

Emergency Farm Assistance: How the Rescue Process Works

The modern agricultural rescue operation follows a predictable procedure.

First, farmers confront rising costs, unstable prices, weather disasters or trade disruptions. Second, government officials announce that agriculture is experiencing a crisis. Third, a committee investigates. Fourth, politicians reveal a spectacular assistance program, complete with photographers, microphones and an enormous cardboard check.

Finally, farmers discover that the application requires 47 documents and three signatures from people who are currently attending conferences.

Minutes from a ministerial working group on agricultural relief, obtained for this report, show that the group spent 40 minutes discussing where the cardboard check should be positioned relative to the flag. Four minutes went to irrigation. The minutes record that the irrigation item was “noted” and “carried forward to a future session.”

The system works beautifully, provided the objective is maintaining a permanent population of farmers requiring emergency assistance. Government officials celebrate each new rescue package with the enthusiasm normally reserved for winning sporting championships. Farmers would prefer not to require rescuing in the first place. Apparently, that’s an unreasonable demand.

Agricultural Productivity Growth: The Difference Between Support and Success

The OECD identifies declining productivity growth as a concern. Global agricultural total-factor productivity growth fell from roughly 1.8% annually during the 1990s to 0.8% over the most recent decade measured. The USDA Economic Research Service’s international agricultural productivity data tells a similar story of slowing gains in many regions.

Those numbers matter because productivity allows farmers to produce more efficiently, improve incomes and absorb economic shocks. But productivity is difficult to photograph.

“Nobody has ever cut a ribbon on a drainage ditch and been invited to speak at a convention,” said Henrik Aldous, a farm policy economist who has studied agricultural subsidy programs for three decades. “A ditch doesn’t have a face. A distressed farmer standing next to a minister has a very good face.”

A new irrigation system doesn’t produce the same political excitement as a government minister standing beside a distressed farmer announcing emergency assistance. Imagine a politician holding a press conference to declare that improved infrastructure has reduced operating costs for the next 30 years. Nobody would watch. Now imagine that same politician announcing $10 billion to rescue agriculture from a catastrophe. Television cameras arrive immediately.

The modern politician doesn’t want to prevent the fire. He wants to be photographed holding the hose.

Why Farmers Want Profit, Not Permanent Rescue Packages

A farmer earning a sustainable return would be wonderfully inconvenient for the rescue industry. He might pay off his equipment, improve his land, hire additional workers and stop requesting emergency assistance. Entire departments would need to find something else to study.

Agricultural consultants could be forced to offer advice that actually increases profitability. Government economists might even have to ask why producers receive so little of the final retail food dollar. The Food and Agriculture Organization has published extensively on how little of each food dollar reaches the farm gate.

For farmers, the sensible objective is straightforward: reliable markets, reasonable infrastructure, manageable rules and sufficient returns to remain in business. That is not opposition to legitimate disaster assistance. It is recognition that a safety net should catch farmers when they fall, not become their permanent place of residence.

A grower survey conducted across four farm-belt regions found that 71 percent of respondents would choose lower input costs over a ceremonial check presentation. Nine percent said they would take the ceremony if it came with lunch.

Unfortunately, the international agricultural bureaucracy has discovered that a profitable farmer makes a terrible campaign photograph.

A bankrupt farmer standing beside a politician holding a giant check?

That’s reelection material.

Five Observations on the Great Farm Bailout

1. Nine hundred and fifty billion dollars. You know what you could do with that? You could buy every farmer a towel. A nice one. And they’d still be drowning, but with better towels.
2. The application is 47 documents. Forty-seven. I’ve bought houses with fewer signatures, and a house at least stays where you put it.
3. They hold a committee to investigate the crisis, and then a second committee to investigate the first committee. Nobody ever investigates the hose.
4. A politician will stand in a muddy field in a nice jacket to announce a rescue. That’s the most dangerous thing in agriculture. A man in loafers near livestock.
5. The cardboard check is the only part of the whole system that’s perfectly accurate. It looks big, it’s worth nothing, and somebody’s going to have to carry it back to the car.

Last Updated on November 4, 2026 by Alan Nafzger