Another address in Williamsport, Indiana received payments for “Crossroad Farms,” “Crossroad Farms-IR,” “Jacob Khole Stephen,” and “Hilda J Stephen” totaling $1,135,594. Eight of these eleven payments are addressed care of Dennis W Stephen.

This analysis represents the tip of the iceberg. The new data set contains more than a million entries. We will continue to report on it in the coming days and weeks.

As we reported last week, it’s not illegal for farms to collect many multiples of the maximum $125,000 subsidy payment. Farms can claim unlimited family members as owner-operators; others, like Deline, can receive payments for multiple separate commodities. A USDA spokesperson last week said:

“To our knowledge, USDA’s payments have all been made in accordance with our published regulations and existing procedures for operations with multiple individuals that maintain management roles or are considered actively engaged in farming.

“Once payments are made, the Department has procedures in place to audit recipients at random or if warranted.”

Yet as senior strategic advisor for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Ferd Hoefner said in the first story, Congress didn’t intend for farms to receive multiple subsidies when it created the safety net. The purpose of these payments is to keep farmers in business.

There’s some indication that farms like Deline, a vast operation that spanned five states in 2012, have made a habit of collecting high subsidy payments over the years. According to an August 2018 story in Forbes, Deline was the tenth-highest recipient of farm subsidies between 2008 and 2017, and Crossroad Farms was the fifth. The new data suggests we’re dealing with the same players at a slightly different game.

Politicians have applied for bailout funding, too. Republican Iowa Senator Charles E. Grassley, who has been open about his participation, appears to have received $3,084. We did not find any entries for Democratic Montana Senator Jon Tester, who has also said he would be seeking funds.

Meanwhile, there’s more money coming: The Trump administration recently announced an additional $16 billion in farm bailout funding, $14.5 billion of which will go directly to producers. A lot of confusion continues to surround the plans for the new bailout payments, which will be distributed on a county-by-county basis, rather than commodity by commodity. The planned farm bailout now totals $26 billion, none of which has been approved by Congress.