Stripping the Farm Safety Net: Project 2025 Targets CCC Authority, ARC, PLC, and the Sugar Program
Project 2025 calls for repealing the Secretary's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) discretionary authority and eliminating ARC, PLC, and the federal sugar program. While framed as anti-corporate-welfare reform, these cuts would gut the farm safety net for row-crop producers, destabilize rural economies that depend on commodity payments, and remove the primary tool Secretaries used for farmer relief — including Trump-era trade aid.
Project 2025's USDA chapter targets three pillars of the farm safety net: the Commodity Credit Corporation's discretionary authority (Section 5), the ARC and PLC subsidy programs, and the federal sugar program. The framing is populist — a legitimate critique that 94% of farm program support between 2014-2016 flowed to just six commodities (corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, soybeans, wheat) which represent only 28% of farm receipts. And yes, the sugar program is regressive, costing lower-income households proportionally more. But the proposed remedy is not reform — it is evisceration.
Repealing Section 5 of the CCC Charter Act would eliminate the Secretary's $30 billion annual borrowing authority — the very authority Trump used to disperse $28 billion in trade aid and $20.5 billion in COVID-19 food purchases. Project 2025 calls this a "slush fund" but in practice it was the only fast-response tool for farm crises Congress didn't anticipate. Without it, future farm disasters, trade wars, or pandemics leave farmers waiting months or years for congressional action. The alternative they propose — requiring prior congressional approval — is a recipe for paralysis.
The attack on ARC and PLC is more insidious. These programs protect row-crop farmers from price collapses and shallow revenue losses. Repealing them while leaving crop insurance intact sounds moderate, but it would push smaller operators off the land entirely, since crop insurance alone doesn't cover shallow losses and is prohibitively expensive for many. The remaining subsidies would concentrate even more on the largest operations, accelerating consolidation. Meanwhile, eliminating the sugar program — which operates at zero taxpayer cost and supports 142,000 jobs — would devastate rural communities in sugar-producing states without reducing grocery prices meaningfully.
The honest reform path is not abolition but restructuring: means-test commodity payments to cap them at $125,000 per entity, close loopholes that let mega-farms collect millions, tie conservation compliance to subsidy eligibility, and expand the safety net to cover livestock, specialty crops, and beginning farmers. That would address the concentration problem Project 2025 identifies without destroying the farm economy it claims to defend.
The humanitarian alternative
Maintain a robust farm safety net through reformed ARC/PLC that ties payments directly to conservation practices and beginning farmer access. Keep CCC section 5 authority but require annual reporting to Congress. Pair these with a permanent, large-scale investment in rural public schools through Title I and IDEA, breaking the link between commodity prices and local education funding.
Grounded in
- Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership – Department of Agriculture (Chapter 11 excerpt)
- Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (Section 5)
- CRS Report: Farm Safety Net Programs – ARC and PLC
- USDA - Commodity Credit Corporation Historical Usage
- EWG Farm Subsidy Database
- Economic Policy Institute - Public Education Funding Threats (2025)
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 11: Department of Education (pp 327-329)"— 294 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to transforming the food system on its web site and other department-dis - seminated material, and it should expressly and regularly communicate the principles informing the objectives listed above, as well as promote these prin - ciples through legislative efforts. The USDA should also carefully review existing efforts that involve inappropriately imposing its preferred agricultural practices onto farmers. Address the Abuse of CCC Discretionary Authority. With the exception of federal crop insurance, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is generally the means by which agricultural-related farm bill programs are funded. The CCC is a funding mechanism, which, in simple terms, has $30 billion a year at its disposal.24 Section 5 of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (Charter Act) 25 gives the Secretary of Agriculture broad discretionary authority to spend “unused” CCC money. However, in general, past Agriculture Secretaries have not used this power to any meaningful extent. This changed dramatically during the Trump Administration, when this discretionary authority was used to fund $28 billion in “trade …"