Agriculture Committee Captured by Agribusiness - $523M Lobbying Shapes Farm Bill

Systematic analysis of lobbying disclosure reports revealed that between 2019 and 2023, giant agribusinesses, food and agriculture industry associations, and special interest groups reported more than $523 million in federal lobby expenditures on disclosure reports listing “farm bill” as a specific lobbying issue. A total of 561 companies and organizations lobbied on the food and farm bill during this period, with agribusiness and crop insurance interests fielding 840 lobbyists—more than one for each member of Congress—demonstrating the extraordinary industry control over agricultural policy through the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.

Campaign Contributions to Committee Leadership

Agribusiness-linked political donors supplemented their lobbying with an additional $3.4 million in campaign contributions to key farm bill architects during the five-year period. These contributions targeted Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee; Representative David Scott (D-GA), ranking member of the House Committee on Agriculture; and Senator John Boozman (R-AR), ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. This systematic funding of committee leadership from both parties ensured bipartisan protection of agribusiness interests regardless of which party controlled Congress.

Revolving Door and Bill Writing

One out of every two lobbyists working on farm bill issues previously worked on Capitol Hill or in federal government, with some having extraordinary insider access—one lobbyist had even written the 2002 farm bill as Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee from 1999 to 2003. This revolving door meant that former committee members and staff now lobbied their former colleagues on behalf of industry clients, leveraging intimate knowledge of committee procedures and member priorities. The practice allowed agribusiness to essentially purchase insider intelligence and legislative drafting expertise from the very officials who once wrote agricultural policy.

Subsidy Protection and Consolidation Support

The lobbying successfully protected massive agricultural subsidies flowing to large corporate farms while failing to address consolidation that harmed small farmers and rural communities. Top spenders included American Crystal Sugar Company, American Farm Bureau Federation, Koch Industries, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—all seeking to preserve subsidy programs benefiting industrial agriculture. In 2018 alone, agribusiness and crop insurance interests spent $95 million on lobbying, demonstrating sustained long-term investment in policy capture. The Agriculture Committee routinely approved farm bills that funneled billions to large agribusinesses while cutting nutrition assistance programs, reflecting priorities dictated by lobbyist influence rather than agricultural or nutritional policy needs.

Significance

The Agriculture Committee became a case study in how industry lobbying can completely capture a congressional committee’s policymaking function. The $523 million in farm bill lobbying over five years—combined with $3.4 million in direct campaign contributions to committee leadership—created a system where agribusiness interests wrote their own subsidies and regulations. The fact that former Agriculture Committee chairmen and staff cycled through the revolving door to lobby their former colleagues demonstrated how industry control operated through personnel placement as much as money. The committee’s consistent approval of farm bills benefiting large corporate farms over family farmers revealed that the panel served agribusiness consolidation rather than agricultural communities. This capture contributed to dramatic rural economic decline, farm consolidation, and the transformation of American agriculture into an industrialized system dominated by massive corporations rather than distributed family operations. The pattern showed that committees with jurisdiction over economically concentrated industries—where a small number of large companies dominate entire sectors—became particularly vulnerable to capture through systematic lobbying campaigns that congressional ethics rules proved powerless to prevent.