Issues >Agriculture > Printer Version
Soaking Up the Bucks
Irrigation Subsidies

$2.2 billion

"If welfare reform is such a good idea, let's start with the California landowners who piously pluck the taxpayers for millions of dollars in a program originally promoted, lest we forget, as subsidized irrigation for lie-on-the-land farmers." San Francisco Examiner Editorial

A major portion of federal irrigation subsidies now flow to some of the world's richest farmers. To ensure that these subsidies go to small family farms rather than to corporate farms, federal law limits to 960 acres the amount of land any farmer can irrigate with federally subsidized water. However, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has repeatedly identified problems in enforcing these acreage limits. Irrigation subsidies waste millions of taxpayer dollars by assisting corporate agribusiness instead of family farms. They hurt the environment by encouraging inefficient water use and by destroying precious wetlands and wildlife populations.

Green Scissors Proposal
Apply a means test to recipients of subsidized irrigation water. Any operation with gross income over $500,000 should pay full cost for water, saving approximately $440 million to $1.1 billion annually.

Current Status

In 1995, the Clinton Administration proposed to tighten regulations to make big farm operations pay full cost for water. However, the Administration backed down in February 1996, and the Interior Department reaffirmed most of the existing rules. In January 1999, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced legislation (S. 320) to apply a $500,000 means test to recipients of subsidized irrigation water. This means test would have forced operations with gross receipts over $500,000 to pay the full cost for the water. No action was taken on the bill.

Program Hurts Taxpayers

Irrigation subsidies have already cost federal taxpayers as much as $70 billion since 1902. These subsidies enrich corporate agribusiness instead of assisting family farmers as originally intended. According to a 1994 GAO analysis, farms in California could still remain profitable even if they paid full cost for water.

The federal government's irrigation program has led to inefficient use of capital, labor and materials.

Program Hurts the Environment

Irrigation subsidies encourage inefficient use of water resources, including production of water-intensive crops in arid regions. The program fosters agricultural production on marginal lands, the cultivation of which often requires excessive use of chemicals.

In these regions, loss of natural river flows has destroyed wetlands and devastated fish and wildlife populations.

Polluted agricultural drainage and runoff from these lands contributes to the degradation of rivers and streams, as well as to the contamination of aquifers and the poisoning of fish and wildlife.

Contacts

• Hal Candee, Barry Nelson, Ronnie Cohen, Natural Resources Defense Council, (415) 777-0220.
• Phil Doe, Citizens' Progressive Alliance, (303) 904-1426.