Agriculture’s Financial Role in the 2016 Elections: Contributions by Sub-sector (Part 2)

Chart notes: Data are from the Center for Responsive Politics and represent total financial contributions by those in the agricultural industry, as defined by the Center of Responsive Politics.

Chart notes: Data are from the Center for Responsive Politics and represent total financial contributions by sub-sectors within the agricultural industry, as defined by the Center of Responsive Politics.

The data show that there are significant differences between the total contributions amounts from each sub-sector. By far the largest contributor—contributing over $8.5 million—is the crop production and basic processing sub-sector. This sector includes producers and processors of sugar, fruit, vegetables, cotton, grain, soybeans, honey, rice and peanuts. You can find specifics about the contributors associated with each category here.

Within the crop production and basic processing sub-sector, individuals and interest groups associated with sugar cane and sugar beets were, by far, the largest contributors with contributions of approximately $5.5 million. The vegetable and fruit sub-sector contributed approximately $2 million, and contributions from individuals and groups in the field crops sector were just under $1 million. The livestock sector is also a major contributor with contributions of nearly $5 million.

What is a bit surprising is the relatively smaller contributions of those in the agricultural inputs sector. Contributors identified to be associated with the farm machinery and equipment, agricultural chemicals, and animal feed and health products made a total of approximately $3 million.

Lastly, I wanted to take a peek into the potential differences between each sub-sector’s contributions to a specific presidential candidate. The table below presents these data. While the contributions data indicate that most contributions were made to either political action committees (PACs) or, to a smaller extent, other candidates campaigning in the Senate and House races, when individuals did contribute to specific presidential candidates, in many cases and across most agricultural sub-sectors, the contributions were to Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump.

In part 3 of this theme, I’ll explore how political contributions have differed across states. If you have suggestions about other questions that you’d like to be answered about political contributions, leave a comment or send an email.

(Photo by mrgarethm is licensed under CC BY 4.0)