These South Dakota farmers have been getting checks from the federal government for decades

Nearly 2,200 South Dakota farms have collected a subsidy payment or disaster payment from federal taxpayers each year since 1985, raising questions about whether they’re gaming a system meant to be a safety net.

The payments to South Dakota farms totaled nearly $1.2 billion, according to federal data analyzed and released by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group. Nationally, nearly 28,000 farms have received a payment each year since 1985, totaling more than $19 billion.

The subsidy and disaster relief programs are intended to provide the country’s farmers with stability when market prices drop or when farmers are hit with disasters. But Scott Faber, the Environmental Working Group’s vice president of government affairs, said its inexplicable that some farmers have received a payment each year when there have been both good and bad years in the farm economy.

“It’s just hard to understand how someone would have gotten a payment every year for the last 32 years,” Faber said.

“Either there are some very unlucky farmers out there or farm subsidies have been reversed engineered to essentially pay off every year,” Faber added.

Krystil Smit, the executive director of the South Dakota Farm Bureau, did not return a message Tuesday afternoon.

The analysis comes amid debate about U.S. House Republican plans to enact work requirements for some food stamp recipients. The proposals, located in this year’s Farm Bill, would also revise eligibility guidelines for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that Democrats say will make it harder for working parents with children to qualify for food stamps and school lunch assistance.

Republicans say the proposals will discourage dependence on federal assistance programs. But Faber said the farm subsidy data show that lawmakers aren’t concerned by chronic dependence on farm safety net programs.

“It just raises the question of whether those farm subsidies are designed to help farmers in down times or are a means of transferring wealth,” he said.

In South Dakota, 255 farmers received $1 million or more in payments from federal taxpayers. The leader was Buhler and Buhler Enterprises in Onida, taking in more than $4.6 million, which averages out to about $145,000 a year. A phone number registered to Clayton Buhler was not answered.

Second on the list was Geraets Brothers, a farming operation in the Dell Rapids area. The more than $3.8 million in subsidy payments averaged out to nearly $120,000 a year. John Geraets did not return a message.

Twenty-two South Dakota farmers received $2 million or more.