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Tulare County and Merced County, compared

The Farm Service Agency administered $191,299,217 through Tulare County and $118,288,657 through Merced County in 2025, out of $24,386,289,632 nationally.

Side by side

Tulare County and Merced County: farm program payments in 2025
MeasureTulare CountyMerced County
AdministeredWhat the Farm Service Agency paid out through offices here.$191,299,217$118,288,657
RecipientsPayees, which are names and addresses as published. Not farms.1,4641,155
Separate paymentsOne row of USDA’s file is one disbursement, so a monthly program counts twelve.3,5693,001
Average per recipientAdministered, divided by payees. A mean over a very skewed distribution.$130,669$102,414
ResidentsThe Census Bureau’s estimate for the county, joined on its FIPS code.485,146297,260
Per residentA way to compare counties, not money anyone living there received.$394$398

How to read this

  • This is where the payment was administered, not where the money went. FSA pays through a county office, and a recipient addressed elsewhere is counted at the office that paid them. Neither column is a measure of farming in the place it names.
  • A recipient is a name and a mailing address. USDA publishes no identifier, so an operation paid through three companies is three recipients here and a payee who moved during the year is two. The recipient counts on the two sides are comparable with each other and are not counts of farms.
  • Larger is not worse, and neither is smaller. The figures are what one agency disbursed under the programs it runs. They are not a subsidy per acre, not the whole of federal farm support, and not a finding about anybody.
  • An office is not a county. Only the offices that resolve to exactly one Census county have a page, and these two do — which is why a population can be put beside them at all. Seventy-nine offices nationally do not.

Each on its own

Data retrieved

Sources