We can’t afford to feed Americans with the status quo of subsidy-dependent agriculture

It is a common myth that only industrial-scale farms can “feed the world.” Many smaller farms often deliver more output per acre than larger ones when measured properly. But it’s equally false to claim regenerative agriculture must be limited to small farms. There are large-scale, profitable regenerative operations. Farmers such as Gabe Brown and Rick Clark, among others, demonstrate that you can manage thousands of acres profitably with chemical-free, no-till or minimal-till practices, and that you can integrate animals, rebuild soil, restore biological life underground, and produce nutrient-dense food without sacrificing profitability.

Yet we must also confront a difficult truth: most of the people who succeed at regenerative farming begin from a position of privilege or external support. For many would-be regenerative farmers — especially younger or new entrants — access to land is the number one barrier. That often means they inherit farmland (debt-free), work another job while using income to support the farm, or rely on outside capital or “angel investors” to carry them through the early, low-return years. High farmland values and price inflation mean that many simply cannot compete when land costs are soaring.

So the reality is that regenerative agriculture — as practiced today — often remains out of reach for most people. Only a subset can manage the cash flow, capital, and risk required to make the transition. The rest remain stuck in the old, subsidized, commodity-driven system, not because they don’t believe in soil health or food integrity, but because they lack the financial runway to survive the break-even years. Meanwhile, our current system overwhelmingly funnels land, capital, and labor toward high-volume commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat, cotton) tied to subsidies and insurance safety nets — rather than supporting diversified farms that prioritize soil health, human health, and long-term land vitality.

Policy Protections

Much of what many call “efficiency” in commodity agriculture — especially with corn and soy — isn’t simply the result of superior farming: it’s the result of public policy. The taxpayer-backed insurance and subsidy architecture underwrites large commodity operations — even when those operations degrade soil, exhaust water, and deplete biological life below the surface. Because of that safety net, planting corn and soy becomes a financially safe bet. Even if the soil is degraded or eroded, and even if a wind or weather event wipes out a crop, the farmer’s risk is largely socialized. That means conventional farms can expand, plant the same crops year after year, and chase yield and scale, insulated from much of the real-world risk that a diversified, regenerative farm would face.

Meanwhile, farmers who want to farm differently — to rebuild soil, integrate livestock, diversify crops, and prioritize long-term human and land health — face far greater real risk. They lack the same insurance-backed guarantees, and the financial system (loans, land rents, input markets) is often built around the assumption that commodity crops will continue.

Here is how the system works: under the federal crop-insurance program, a farm’s “approved yield” is typically based on a multi-year record of what the land has produced — actual yield history over 4 to 10 years (“Actual Production History,” or APH). The farmer then chooses a coverage level — usually between 50 and 85 percent of that APH yield. If actual yield or revenue falls below that threshold due to drought, flood, wind, pests, or market crashes, the insurance pays out to make up the difference. Many commodity farmers also carry “revenue protection,” which insures not just yield but market-price times yield, shielding against both crop failure and a price crash.

Because of these protections, farms growing corn, soy, wheat and cotton — even on degraded or biologically poor soil — can get a check even when production fails. Private insurers and the government underwrite the risk. According to official data, from 2000 to 2016, producers under the program “received about US $65 billion more in claim payments than they paid in premiums.” That gap demonstrates that crop insurance does far more than offset bad years: over time, it functions as a substantial subsidy framework — shifting financial risk away from farmers and onto taxpayers.

Trapped Farmers

It’s no wonder, then, that many farmers find themselves trapped in a system: they know what they’re doing is not right. They may see the problems — degraded soil, polluted water, chemical dependency, human-health consequences — but they are caught between survival and doing what is right for future generations. They have debts, mortgages, land rents, input loans, equipment payments, and families depending on them. The insurance program becomes a security blanket. Choose the commodity crops, and even if your yield fails, you get a payout. Choose differently — diversify, rebuild soil, reduce chemical inputs — and you face real financial risk, with little institutional support.

And who really gets rich under this system? Not the average farmer struggling under debt and risk. Not the typical rural family hoping to pass land to their children. Rather, private insurance companies, large agribusinesses, input-supplier conglomerates, and commodity-grain processors benefit — along with the political and financial infrastructure built around scale, volume, and monoculture. Meanwhile, public money underwrites the risk, and society at large ends up carrying the downstream costs.

Public money underwrites large-scale industrial agriculture — and we pay twice. First, as taxpayers funding subsidies and risk backups; second, as a society paying with our deteriorating health, polluted water, degraded ecology, and rising healthcare burdens tied to diet-related illness, chronic disease, infertility, and environmental decay.

Real farming — the kind that supports land, communities, and generations — should not be judged solely by bushels per acre or short-term profit. Real farming is about soil biology, fertility, enduring land health, resilience against weather events, nourishment, and ecological balance.

True Progress

We must stop pretending bigger, mechanized, subsidy-backed monocultures represent progress. The “new way” isn’t progress — in many ways, it is a mistake we’ve already begun to regret.

Rather than supporting extraction and short-term volume, we should support care, renewal, and real investment in land and people. We should expect our agriculture to respect soil, water, microbiology, human health — not undermine them. If we care about our children, our land, our communities, and about real nourishment and long-term human health, then we simply cannot afford to continue on the path the subsidy system has set us on. The cost is already being paid — by taxpayers, by every person who depends on food, and by human health as a whole.

If we are truly serious about the future of humanity — about food, land, family farms, and health — we need to demand better. We need to shift away from policies that incentivize fragility and extraction toward policies that encourage renewal, life, resilience, nourishment, and long-term value for generations to come. In truth, we are paying — and have been paying — for harm. Our delay only multiplies the cost.