Farm Relief May Be Revealed

This week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins suggested the long-discussed financial relief for America’s farmers will be released next week.  

Secretary Rollins confirmed the bridge payment plan during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture: “Just a couple of days ago, China announced that they were going to halt all purchases from Brazil, because they had found some irregularities in the soybeans they are buying from Brazil, and what that means is that a continued signal that this country, and our farmers, produce the best, highest quality corn, sorghum, etcetera in the world, and what you have been able to do is open those markets up, and again, move to an era where the farmers are not so reliant on government checks, they have the markets to sell their product. Having said that, we do have a bridge payment we will announce with you next week as we're still trying to recover from the Biden years.” 

Ad-hoc and disaster aid is expected to reach $40 billion dollars, the highest single year of relief payments since 1933.

There are questions surrounding the sourcing of the relief funds. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that the Commodity Credit Corporation had only $4 billion dollars in its accounts.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R, IA: “In order for this to happen, I don’t think the Secretary’s got enough money to fulfill the figure that I’ve heard from the White House, that this aid might be somewhere between 10 billion and 14 billion. And I think it’s going to take an appropriation from Congress to make up the difference.” 

The 43-day shutdown of the Federal government is being blamed for some of the delay in delivering aid. 

An analysis of USDA data by the Farm Bureau suggests that the 2025 crop year will be the third consecutive harvest where production costs exceed crop revenue. Every major and large specialty crop is expected to be unprofitable in 2025. Corn and soybeans alone are estimated to lose $22 billion dollars. 

For Market to Market, I’m Peter Tubbs

Contact: Peter.Tubbs@iowapbs.org