Author: Bart Fischer

As we noted back in December 2024, the American Relief Act provided $30.78 billion in relief for agricultural producers—$10 billion for economic assistance and $20.78 billion for natural disaster relief. 

Signup for the economic assistance—known as the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP)—began on March 19, 2025, and runs through August 15, 2025. Initial ECAP payments were factored by 85% to ensure total program payments do not exceed available funding. If all goes as planned, FSA may issue a second payment in August.

USDA has also started rolling out the $20.78 billion in natural disaster assistance. For example, on May 29, 2025, USDA announced that approximately $1 billion in Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) payments were being issued to affected producers. At this point, anticipation is building for sign-up to begin for the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP). SDRP is the successor to the Wildfires and Hurricanes Indemnity Program (WHIP) and the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Recent History of Natural Disaster Relief for Agricultural Producers

Program	Crop Year	Authorizing Statute	Enactment Date
WHIP	2017	P.L. 115-123	2/9/18
WHIP+	2018 & 2019	P.L. 116-20	6/6/19
ERP	2020 & 2021	P.L. 117-43	9/30/21
ERP	2022	P.L. 117-328	12/29/22
SDRP	2023 & 2024	P.L. 118-158	12/21/24

SDRP will provide assistance to producers for necessary expenses related to losses of revenue, quality or production of crops (including milk, on-farm stored commodities, crops prevented from planting, and harvested adulterated wine grapes), trees, bushes, and vines, as a consequence of droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, tornadoes, winter storms, freeze, including a polar vortex, smoke exposure, and excessive moisture occurring in calendar years 2023 and 2024. While the details will be released by USDA once approved by OMB, following are a few key observations:

• Sign-up Date. USDA has announced a target date of July 7, 2025, for sign-up to begin. While that date may slip a bit as OMB finalizes its review, all indications are that a sign-up announcement is imminent. 

• Funding. While $20.78 billion was reserved for natural disaster assistance, Congress earmarked $2 billion for livestock (via ELRP), and block grants to states for hurricane relief must also be funded from that total. As a result, the amount available for SDRP will be significantly less than $20.78 billion.  

• Factoring. When compared against projected losses, there is virtually no question that USDA will have to implement a payment factor.  Recall, the Biden Administration noted that—had they implemented a flat payment factor for ERP 2022—it would have been 27%. Their solution at the time was to implement progressive factoring instead, an approach that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has repeatedly rejected. So, while we know there will not be progressive factoring, we do not know what the flat factor will be. Regardless, we’d argue that you shouldn’t get too hung up on the payment factor. Why? USDA will simply estimate projected payments, compare it to available funding, and set the factor accordingly. In other words, if USDA’s approach with SDRP is generous in calculating payments, then it will require a more significant factor to make sure it doesn’t exceed available funding. The most important part to remember is that USDA will be allocating a historic amount of disaster funding in the months ahead…and any payment factor will be applied uniformly to all program applicants.

• Sequence.  USDA has noted that SDRP sign-up will focus first on those with indemnified losses. USDA is targeting September 15, 2025, to begin sign-up for those with uncovered losses (i.e., shallow losses) including producers without crop insurance, and quality losses.

We will provide additional details once SDRP is officially released.

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Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “Sign-up for Natural Disaster Relief Beginning Soon.” Southern Ag Today 5(27.4). July 3, 2025. Permalink

While the farm bill debate in the U.S. Senate has tended to be rather bipartisan in nature, that has not been the case in the U.S. House of Representatives, at least not in recent memory. Invariably, at some point in the farm bill debate, the minority party in the House will accuse the majority party of “partisanship” that will “bring about the end of the bipartisan coalition needed to pass a farm bill.” In this article, we examine these claims in the context of voting history on the farm bill in the House over the last 40 years.

As noted in Figure 1, the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills both had a significant share of minority (i.e., Republican) votes on the House version of the farm bill along with the conference agreement. With the Democrats in the minority for the 1996 Farm Bill – after having been in the majority in the House for 40 years – they accounted for just 20% of the “yes” votes on the House version of the farm bill but ultimately accounted for one-third of the “yes” votes on the conference report. The 2002 Farm Bill was very bipartisan in nature with the minority (i.e., Democrats) accounting for roughly half the “yes” votes on both the House version and conference report.

The significant departure came in the 2008 Farm Bill when Democrats regained control of the House.  For the 2008 Farm Bill, the minority (i.e., Republicans) accounted for just 8% of the “yes” votes on the House version of the farm bill. Despite the partisan nature of the House version of the farm bill, Republicans ultimately accounted for 32% of the “yes” votes on the conference agreement. That dynamic persisted (and became even more pronounced) in the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills, with the minority (i.e., Democrats) not voting for the House version of the bill in either case but accounting for 35% and 51% of the “yes” votes on the conference report, respectively. Notably, for the 2018 Farm Bill, more Democrats than Republican voted “yes” on the conference report, following the mid-term elections that resulted in Democrats retaking the House.

Bottom line: accusations of “partisanship” threatening to “end the bipartisan coalition needed to pass a farm bill” generally falls on deaf ears as partisanship around the House version of the farm bill has become standard operating procedure, largely starting with the 2008 Farm Bill. Despite the rocky process in the House, the final version of the farm bill reported out of the conference between the House and Senate continues to be widely bipartisan.

Figure 1.  Voting History on the Farm Bill, U.S. House of Representatives a/Passed by voice vote

Farm Bill	Minority Party in House	Minority Share of House Seats	Minority Share  of Yes Votes (House-Drafted Farm Bill)	Minority Share  of Yes Votes (Conference Report)
Food Security Act of 1985	Republican	42%	35%	40%
Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990	Republican	40%	a/	37%
Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996	Democrat	47%	20%	33%
Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002	Democrat	49%	48%	49%
Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008	Republican	46%	8%	32%
Agricultural Act of 2014	Democrat	46%	0%	35%
Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018	Democrat	45%	0%	51%

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Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “Just How Bipartisan are Farm Bills?” Southern Ag Today 5(23.4). June 5, 2025. Permalink

The farm safety net includes a number of risk management tools that help producers navigate the risks they face, ranging from the Federal Crop Insurance Program to Title 1 of the farm bill. With crop insurance, farmers purchase the coverage which typically protects against price and yield risk within the growing season. By contrast, Title 1 of the farm bill authorizes programs – Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) in particular – that are designed to complement crop insurance, protecting against risks not otherwise covered. 

Because some of the programs have features in common, Congress has chosen to limit the choices available to producers. For example, the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) is an area-wide crop insurance policy that protects against county-wide losses in prices and yields (depending on the underlying policy) within the deductible portion of a producer’s crop insurance policy (i.e., the portion not covered by the underlying individual policy). In addition, in the 2014 Farm Bill, Congress created ARC, an FSA-administered program that protects against shallow losses in county-wide revenue. Because of the similarities between SCO and ARC, Congress stipulated that a producer was not eligible to purchase SCO on a crop enrolled in ARC. By contrast, a producer that enrolls the base acres on their farm in PLC – which covers deeper declines in marketing-year average prices – is permitted to purchase SCO at their discretion.

What does this have to do with cotton?  In the 2014 Farm Bill, upland cotton was removed as a covered commodity and cotton producers were left with no access to ARC and PLC.  Instead, they were left with an area-wide crop insurance policy – very similar to SCO – that was known as the Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX). Several years later, when seed cotton was added to the farm bill in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, cotton producers once again had access to ARC and PLC (albeit on seed cotton rather than cotton lint). An effort was made to eliminate STAX as a result, but policymakers recognized that not all producers have seed cotton base acres, so a political compromise was reached: STAX would remain available, but cotton producers would have to choose between STAX and ARC/PLC. According to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, “[b]eginning with the 2019 crop year, a farm shall not be eligible for [STAX] for upland cotton for a crop year for which the farm is enrolled in coverage for seed cotton under [PLC] or [ARC].” Notice, the restriction did not simply prohibit a producer from having access two area-wide tools (i.e., STAX and ARC), it also prohibited producers from having access to STAX and PLC, despite the two options having little in common.

There is no prohibition on SCO and PLC, for good reason, as they cover different risks. We question the wisdom in deviating from that logic with respect to STAX and PLC. While we will explore the differences between STAX and PLC in detail in a future article, suffice it to say we would encourage policymakers to take another look at this requirement as they go about the process of reauthorizing the 2018 Farm Bill, especially in light of the current state of the farm economy.

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Fischer, Bart L., and Hunter Biram. “STAX and PLC: Should Cotton Producers Have to Choose?” Southern Ag Today 5(15.4). April 10, 2025. Permalink

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that enrollment for the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs will begin next Tuesday (January 21) and run through April 15. Even if you plan to keep the same elections, make sure to reach out to your local Farm Service Agency (FSA) office about signing your annual enrollment contract…preferably well before the deadline.

As you start to think about program election, the Effective Reference Prices for the 2025 crop year can be found in Table 1. The 2025 ARC-County benchmark yields and revenues as of January 6, 2025 can be downloaded here. While adjustments are being made to incorporate the latest data from FSA, the Agricultural & Food Policy Center’s (AFPC) 2025 ARC-CO/PLC Decision Aid will soon be available at https://afpc.tamu.edu. While we are more than a year away from knowing whether either program will trigger for the 2025 crop year, AFPC’s decision tool can be used to explore a variety of potential outcomes, including those based on the latest macroeconomic projections from our sister center, the Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri. If you have questions about the enrollment decision, don’t hesitate to reach out to us or a member of our team. We are happy to be a resource.

Table 1. Effective Reference Prices (ERPs) for the 2025 Crop Year

Covered Commodity	Units	2025 ERP
Wheat	Bushel	$5.56
Barley	Bushel	$4.95
Oats	Bushel	$2.76
Peanuts	Pound	$0.2675
Corn	Bushel	$4.26
Grain Sorghum	Bushel	$4.51
Soybeans	Bushel	$9.66
Dry Peas	Pound	$0.1163
Lentils	Pound	$0.2297
Canola	Pound	$0.2054
Large Chickpeas	Pound	$0.2477
Small Chickpeas	Pound	$0.2190
Sunflower Seed	Pound	$0.2015
Flaxseed	Bushel	$11.53
Mustard Seed	Pound	$0.2317
Rapeseed	Pound	$0.2015
Safflower	Pound	$0.2275
Crambe	Pound	$0.2100
Sesame Seed	Pound	$0.2317
Seed Cotton	Pound	$0.3670
Rice (long grain)	Pound	$0.1400
Rice (med/short grain)	Pound	$0.1400
Rice (temperate japonica)	Pound	$0.1990

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Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “ARC and PLC Enrollment Starts Next Tuesday.” Southern Ag Today 5(3.4). January 16, 2025. Permalink

For months, Southern Ag Today has been documenting growing economic pressure in the countryside, particularly for row-crop producers (see here, here, and here). We have also repeatedly highlighted the need for assistance to help growers shoulder losses in 2024 while preparing for a rather bleak outlook in 2025, particularly with farm bill negotiations having stalled in Congress. Following a weekend of high-stakes negotiations, Congress released its draft supplemental text on Tuesday, proposing $30.78 billion in economic and disaster assistance for the countryside. 

In October, we highlighted the introduction of the Farmer Assistance and Revenue Mitigation Act of 2024 (FARM Act) as introduced by Rep. Trent Kelly (R-MS). Of the $30.78 billion authorized by the supplemental, $10 billion is set aside for economic assistance that hews closely to the structure of the FARM Act. The supplemental did include a few key changes. For example, the payment factor was reduced from 60% (as envisioned in the FARM Act) to 26% to fit within the $10 billion budget for the program. Additionally, the supplemental also imposed minimum payments for economic assistance (based on 8% of the statutory reference price established in the 2018 Farm Bill), which serves to raise the payment rates for several of the smaller-acreage crops along with peanuts and rice. Table 1 includes an estimate of the payment rates for economic assistance. The payments will be based on acres planted to the eligible commodity in 2024 (for harvest, grazing, haying, silage, or other similar purposes) and 50% of the acreage prevented from being planted in 2024. Separate payment limits would apply for economic assistance: $125,000 for persons or entities that derive less than 75% of their income from farming, ranching, or forestry and $250,000 for persons or entities that derive 75% or more of their income from farming, ranching or forestry.

Eligible Commodity	Estimated Payment ($/Acre)
Corn	43.80
Soybeans	30.61
Wheat	31.80
Cotton	84.70
Rice (L/M)*	71.37
Sorghum	41.85
Oats	78.42
Barley*	21.76
Peanuts*	76.30
Dry peas*	16.16
Lentils*	19.32
Chickpeas, large*	24.16
Chickpeas, small*	25.04
Sunflower*	23.38
Rapeseed*	23.23
Canola*	26.76
Safflower*	15.71
Flaxseed*	17.48
Mustard*	11.42
Crambe*	19.37
Sesame*	5.28
*Commodities estimated to receive minimum payment, either through formula with complete data or based on assumption due to lack of publicly available data, final payment rates may vary.

In addition to economic assistance, $20.78 billion will be available for disaster assistance to help cover losses in 2023 and 2024. Out of this amount, $2 billion must be made available for livestock losses; $30 million maybe made available to crop insurance agents to help offset the freeze in administrative and operating expense reimbursements imposed by the Obama Administration; and $3 million must be made available to address concerns with circumvention of trade laws regarding molasses on the northern border. Importantly, there are a number of other items that may be funded from this amount, including block grants for various purposes.  For example, the bill allows for block granted funds to be used for agricultural producers who have suffered losses due to the failure of Mexico to deliver water to the United States in accordance with the 1944 Water Treaty. The provision closely follows Rep. Monica De La Cruz’s (R-TX) bill – the South Texas Agriculture Emergency Assistance Act – which proposed to allocate $280 million in grants to the State of Texas (via the Texas Department of Agriculture) to help offset losses incurred by border producers.

As of the time of publishing, the path forward is not remotely clear. Yesterday afternoon, President Trump and Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance released a statement noting that “Republicans want to support our farmers…” but highlighting that “[t]he only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.”  While this is strong support from the incoming Administration, the current Congress and Administration must sign it into law now for assistance to arrive in time to help with the 2025 crop year.

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Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “Congress Poised to Deliver Vital Aid to the Countryside?” Southern Ag Today 4(51.4). December 19, 2024. Permalink