What the government paid farmers
The Farm Service Agency paid 745,832 recipients $9.2 billion in 2023, across 2,154,079 separate payments under 78 programs. That is what USDA published for that calendar year, and a recipient is a name and a mailing address as it appears in the file.
American Factbook Research
The national picture in 2023
- $9.2 billion
- Paid out
- $9,168,944,576
- Net: a repayment is recorded as a negative payment, and 2023 has 0.
- 745,832
- Recipients
- Name and mailing address as published. Under name alone there would be 710,579.
- 2,154,079
- Payments
- One row is one disbursement, and a recipient can take several in a day.
- 78
- Programs
- Named in every row of the file, so this is the list and not a sample of it.
- 3,059
- Counties paid
- The county office that administered the payment, not where any land is.
- $3.1 million
- Largest single payment
- $3,100,000
- One disbursement, not one recipient’s year.
Figures come from the payment files USDA published for 2023, taken on September 22, 2026.
Where the money went
The largest 1.0% of recipients — 7,459 of them — received $1.9 billion, or 20.6% of the year. The largest 10.0% received 63.4%. Counted over recipients rather than over payments, because a recipient with forty payments is one recipient.
The largest programs
| Program | Paid out | Recipients | Payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIVESTOCK FORAGE PROGRAM | $1,756,184,266 | 163,247 | 228,925 |
| CRP PAYMENT - ANNUAL RENTAL | $1,754,848,289 | 303,593 | 668,220 |
| DAIRY MARGIN COVERAGE | $1,155,895,018 | 18,302 | 170,621 |
| EMRGNCY RELIEF PRGM TRK 1-NONSPCLTY CRPS | $835,838,255 | 97,293 | 98,828 |
| EMERGENCY RELIEF PRGM 2 | $457,313,920 | 4,319 | 8,334 |
| EMERGENCY RELIEF PRGM 2 | $407,778,250 | 6,333 | 11,432 |
| EMERGENCY LIVESTOCK RELIEF PROGRAM - CAA | $378,703,635 | 171,513 | 207,225 |
| EMERG ASSIST LIVESTOCK BEES FISH (ELAP) | $362,458,393 | 22,913 | 28,610 |
| AGRICULTURAL RISK COVERAGE PROG - COUNTY | $259,102,329 | 67,608 | 178,743 |
| RICE PRODUCTION PROGRAM | $243,512,895 | 12,358 | 24,252 |
The largest states
| State | Paid out | Recipients | Payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $1,001,468,698 | 71,011 | 242,459 |
| Oklahoma | $663,803,733 | 41,828 | 136,604 |
| Kansas | $638,476,248 | 57,094 | 187,733 |
| Iowa | $602,054,238 | 68,885 | 186,239 |
| California | $566,910,979 | 9,182 | 31,339 |
| Nebraska | $530,761,121 | 38,867 | 112,629 |
| South Dakota | $446,346,062 | 29,791 | 104,468 |
| Missouri | $426,759,133 | 50,371 | 111,560 |
| Minnesota | $377,695,494 | 44,524 | 122,815 |
| Wisconsin | $328,190,931 | 17,906 | 81,339 |
USDA also paid American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands of the U.S., which have no state entry on this site to link up to and so have no page here. Their payments are in every national figure above.
The largest counties
| County | State | Paid out | Recipients |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tulare | California | $64,595,521 | 591 |
| Fresno | California | $56,755,306 | 749 |
| Stanislaus | California | $38,847,133 | 431 |
| Kern | California | $31,949,002 | 280 |
| Gaines | Texas | $30,749,807 | 871 |
| Butte | California | $28,652,708 | 560 |
| Curry | New Mexico | $27,615,059 | 638 |
| Merced | California | $27,272,944 | 358 |
| San Joaquin | California | $26,796,176 | 393 |
| Sutter | California | $25,632,617 | 485 |
The county is the FSA office that administered the payment. It is not where the land is, and FSA’s county numbering is its own rather than the Census’s.
The largest recipients
| Recipient | Where | Paid | Payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rickie Simmons & Son Tropical Fis | RUSKIN | $4,256,863 | 4 |
| Neal Cattle Company,Llc | PURCELL | $4,217,011 | 27 |
| Modesto Reservoir Ranch | HUGHSON | $3,834,948 | 5 |
| David Britz Linda Britz Glassman & Martin Britz Pt | FRESNO | $3,475,000 | 2 |
| Heard Family Farm | BRINSON | $3,307,864 | 2 |
| Imperial Tropicals | LAKELAND | $2,844,842 | 3 |
| Castle Rock Land & Livestock | NORTH SALT LAKE | $2,744,785 | 10 |
| R&G Fish, Llc | PORT LAVACA | $2,637,542 | 1 |
| Lindskov Ranch Gen Ptr | ISABEL | $2,539,242 | 65 |
| Urban Tropical Inc | LAKELAND | $2,377,157 | 3 |
Names are printed as USDA prints them, with capitals softened for reading. Some recipients are the agency itself: FSA, the Commodity Credit Corporation and a number of county offices appear in the published file, and this site does not delete rows from the record it was given.
Everything in this hub
50 prerendered pages, by type, counted from the sitemap — so this list is what exists rather than what somebody remembered to add.
States
50What the Farm Service Agency paid through each state’s county offices, by program and recipient.
Sources
- USDA Farm Service Agency — farm program payment files — U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency · U.S. Government work. USDA states no licence on the payment-files page itself; its site-wide Digital Rights and Copyright notice reads "Most information presented on the USDA Web site is considered public domain information. Public domain information may be freely distributed or copied, but use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested. Attribution may be cited as follows: 'U.S. Department of Agriculture.'" It carves out third-party material — "Some materials on the USDA Web site are protected by copyright, trademark, or patent … USDA has made every attempt to identify and clearly label them" — which does not reach these files: they are FSA's own administrative record of disbursements it made, and are not labelled otherwise. The attribution is honoured rather than treated as optional: every page naming a figure from this file names the publisher and links the file. Read 22 September 2026 from a December 2024 archive snapshot, because usda.gov/policies-and-links returns 403 to scripted agents. · retrieved September 22, 2026
Data retrieved