How Inefficient US Farm Policy Costs Taxpayers, Businesses, and Farmers Billions

The document examines how US farm subsidies, specifically the Federal Crop Insurance Program, encourage wasteful farming practices that lead to widespread nitrogen pollution. It details the resulting costs to public health, water utilities, and coastal industries, while proposing a transition to integrated prairie strips to reduce runoff and save taxpayers and farmers billions of dollars.

• The Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) creates perverse incentives that encourage farmers to prioritize indemnity payments over environmental health, leading to the overproduction of commodity crops like corn and soybeans even when they are not profitable.
• Agricultural nitrogen pollution imposes massive financial burdens on the US, with one study estimating annual damages to human health and the environment at $157 billion.
• Nitrogen runoff from farms contaminates drinking water and causes severe health issues, including various cancers, inflammatory bowel disease, and 'blue baby syndrome' in infants.
• The economic costs of nitrogen pollution extend to public infrastructure and private industry, including billions in water treatment costs and nearly $1 billion in annual losses for the tourism industry due to polluted water bodies.
• Integrating 'prairie strips'—narrow bands of native perennial plants—into row-crop farming can drastically reduce pollution; planting them on 10% of land can reduce nitrogen loss in surface water runoff by 85%, phosphorus loss by 90%, and sedimentation by 95%.
• Implementing prairie strips across the 12-state Corn Belt could generate between $571 million and $854 million in net savings for the region, including over $200 million in fertilizer savings for farmers.
• Current USDA conservation compliance is poorly enforced, with a 2014 report finding that $4 billion in payments were made to land in 10 states without the required compliance reviews.

APA

Union of Concerned Scientists (2016). How Inefficient US Farm Policy Costs Taxpayers, Businesses, and Farmers Billions. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/08/Subsidizing-Waste-full-report.pdf

Chicago

Union of Concerned Scientists. How Inefficient US Farm Policy Costs Taxpayers, Businesses, and Farmers Billions. 2016. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/08/Subsidizing-Waste-full-report.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Union of Concerned Scientists |title=How Inefficient US Farm Policy Costs Taxpayers, Businesses, and Farmers Billions |date=August 2016 |url=https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/08/Subsidizing-Waste-full-report.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{unionofconcernedscientists2016how, author = {{Union of Concerned Scientists}}, title = {{How Inefficient US Farm Policy Costs Taxpayers, Businesses, and Farmers Billions}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2016}, month = aug, url = {https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/08/Subsidizing-Waste-full-report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }