Subsidies

Rollins: First 50 Days Fighting for Our Country Has Been A Joy, But There's More Work To Do

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:56:39 GMT

USDA Chief Brooke Rollins is feeling pretty good about her first 50 days as President Donald Trump’s secretary of agriculture.

The Texas native, who just celebrated her 53rd birthday on April 10, is proud of what her team at USDA has accomplished since taking the reins from former Secretary of Agriculture and Iowa attorney Tom Vilsack.

But despite that progress, her list of issues to tackle soon is quickly filling up. Among those action items is deciding if American farmers will need another round of assistance payments later this year and if USDA headquarters should be relocated.

If Trump’s tariff plan proves successful, Rollins says we’ll be “shipping and selling more of our row crops than ever before.”

In that case, she doesn’t anticipate needing to sign off on additional USDA assistance payments for farmers later this summer. But there’s also a potential worst-case scenario where the agency may need to provide direct farmer aid, which also happened in 2019 during tariff disruption.

Rollins hopes to soon have answers to the rumor that USDA headquarters are being relocated. With more than 106,000 employees across 29 divisions, she says USDA is a “mammoth agency” and alluded that the agency may be better positioned to serve America’s farmers and ranchers in a location closer to the major crop and livestock producing areas of the country.

“Does it make sense for one of the bigger divisions to be in Washington, D.C.? Maybe not,” she says. “So, how do we get the government closer to the people we serve? That is one of the President’s key visions in realigning the entire government and returning the power to the people – by ensuring we have the right governance structure in place, and we’re not strangling the very people we’re trying to help with more regulation and more bureaucrats.”

Rollins also expects some reductions in the USDA workforce could be coming as the Trump administration and the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) set out to “realign USDA around farmers, ranchers, foresters and ag producers first.”

Of course, the issue most farmers have top of mind today, besides low commodity prices and high interest rates, is the ongoing tariff saga.

Rollins says she can’t promise anything on that front yet, but she is confident President Trump’s negotiating chops will be able to finagle the best deal possible. Her USDA onboarding agenda included a deep dive into the global ag economy and tariffs – lessons that have proven rather enlightening for the former D.C. think-tank policy director.

“I’ll tell you what I understand now, and I’ve studied the numbers, the non-tariff barriers and what these other countries have done – not just to all American imports, but specifically to our farmers and our ranchers,” she says. “I’ve heard the President say multiple times just in the last few days how it’s unbelievable what these other countries have gotten away with for decades. And that’s what he’s changing (with tariffs).”

Your Next Read - China Increases Tariffs to 125%: What Ag Exports Will Be Most Impacted

30 Minutes With Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins In Her First Week On the Job

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:14:00 GMT

Since Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024 , Brooke Rollins has been focused on how to build the teams and the plans that impact the trajectory of agriculture and rural America. On that day, while en route with her husband and four teenagers in their motor home to Auburn, Ala., for the Texas A&M football game, she got a call from now President Donald Trump. The purpose of his call: She was his top choice to fill his final significant cabinet position, Secretary of Agriculture.

Obviously, she had to wait for confirmation, which came last week on Feb.13 when the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed her as the 33^rd Secretary of Agriculture , but since that Saturday before Thanksgiving, she’s been on the go with an accelerated enthusiasm to understand the significant challenges facing rural communities that lost 147,000 family farms between 2017 and 2022 and why the cost of inputs are up 30% as exports are down $37 billion this year and likely to fall further in the months to come.

“This is a crisis, and this is something that I understand inherently,” Rollins said to kick off Top Producer Summit in Kansas City on Tuesday. “My promise to you is this, and my commitment will never waver, that every minute of every day for the next four years I will do everything within my power, with hopefully God’s hand on all of us and our work, to ensure we are not just entering the golden age for America, as my boss, President Trump, likes to say, but we are entering the golden age for agriculture.”

What Has Rollins Been Up to the Past Four Years?
Secretary Rollins and President Trump have worked together for almost eight years. She was in the West Wing with him for years two, three and four of his first term running his domestic policy agenda.

“This real estate guy from New York City brought that vision to life, and then in the last term, was able to really do some remarkable things,” Rollins said in regard to President Trump returning power to the people who just want a chance at the American dream. “I call it the great pause, the four years in between term one and term two. But I think the great pause allowed very intentional planning. It allowed a courageous and bold leader in President Trump to become a fearless leader and to do everything he can to bring America back to greatness.”

In the “dark days of January 2021,” as she described, Secretary Rollins helped launch the America First Policy Institute, a think tank established by former Trump officials to promote conservative policies. The idea was that those policies that made America great in Trump’s first term would continue indefinitely, not just for a second term, but for four years, eight years or 36 years, Rollins described.

First Week On the Job
Since being confirmed last week, Secretary Rollins has been in the Washington, D.C., USDA office for a few hours, but most of her time has been spent in Kentucky at National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville and Gallrein Farms and in Kansas visiting Finney’s County Feeder, High Plains Ponderosa Dairy and the National Beef Packing Plant .

Describing herself as “a reader and a studier,” Rollins seems adamant to hear firsthand from farmers and ranchers. She referenced her visits to the dairy farm and National Beef facility as inspiring, in a good way but also in a way that helps her understand the real challenges at hand.

Speaking to the crowd at Top Producer Summit, she shared her appreciation for the “entrepreneurial American game changers” who are doing their part to feed the world.

“It is so inspiring and a reminder of the very beginning of our country.” Rollins said. “Our revolution was fought by farmers, our Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The backbone of the great American experiment is this community.”

Thank you @topproducermag for hosting @RogerMarshallMD and me in Kansas City, Missouri, with 1,000 of the Top Producers from across the US to talk about issues like expanding trade access and cutting regulatory red tape for farmers.

Biden’s ZERO trade deals and inflationary… pic.twitter.com/ejMxKxkRMG
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) February 19, 2025

Farmer Q&A
Watch and listen to what Secretary Rollins, as well as Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, had to say on stage at Top Producer Summit about these 7 topics:

Trade and tariffs — “ Let’s go barnstorm the world , and let’s go find some more trade partners and access [to market opportunities],” Rollins said.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts and modernizing USDA — “DOGE is a very valid and important effort across all government. The stories of waste and abuse were really just, not USDA specific but across government, beginning,” Rollins said.
Federal programs, such as CSP and EQIP — “Our commitment is that if there have been commitments made, those will be honored. Getting our arms around all of that right now is really, really, important. Again, going back to the President’s heart and commitment to our farmers, I feel confident we will be able to solve any issues that are in front of our ag community, that are potentially being compromised by the DOGE effort, while at the same time recognizing how very, very important it is,” Rollins said.
Future of USDA — “There’s no question USDA needs some modernization. I’m just beginning to lean into that as well,” Rollins said. USDA has 106,000 employees and 29 departments. “The Secretary is taking over a department where only 6% of the [D.C.] people work in the office,” Marshall added.
Renewable fuels — Prior to President Trump’s first term, he was “the first major candidate to support biofuels, and I think that carried him through Iowa in many ways. … We’ve got E15 year-round. I think that gives us some certainty as well. … The President is supporting that. I think we’re trying to figure out how to save 45Z, but we can’t let China benefit from it. Right now, China is benefiting more from [45Z] than my farmers and ranchers are, so we’ve got to fix that,” Marshall says.
Immigration policies and availability of long-term labor — “I have a full-bodied understanding of the challenges within the labor market, and I believe the President does too. … I believe that we will very soon be talking about it again. Clearly, the H-2A program needs significant reform, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, she’s going through the [confirmation] process right now. … Hopefully she’ll get her vote very soon. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Rollins said.
Trump’s cabinet members — “Our cabinet is comprised of people that have been working together and have been friends and colleagues for years, with a few exceptions. Bobby Kennedy is a new friend, but Lee Zeldin and I worked together in America First Works and America First Policy Institute for the last almost four years, Linda McMahon in education and John Brooks — these are our people,” Rollins said.

USDA Set to Begin Distributing $2.14B in Payments to Eligible Producers and Landowners

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:52:52 GMT

USDA will begin distributing approximately $2.14 billion in payments to eligible agricultural producers and landowners through key conservation and safety-net programs. The $2.14 billion in payments is divided as follows:

Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and CRP Transition Incentive Program (CRP TIP): More than $1.7 billion.
Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage (ARC/PLC) programs: Over $447 million (the ARC and PLC payments are related to 2023 crops).

The CRP’s current enrollment is nearly 26 million acres.

The combination of the general signup (199,214 acres), continuous signup for fiscal year (FY) 2023 (693,920 acres) and new Grasslands CRP enrollments (1.44 million acres) and acres exiting the program will put CRP acreage at 26 million. At the end of August, there were 24.7 million acres in the program. USDA currently cannot take in any new CRP enrollments at this time as the authority for such activities expired Sept. 30, 2024, with the expiration of provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill. However, USDA data shows that nearly contracts on nearly 186,000 acres for FY 2024 enrollment via continuous signups were approved prior to that date.

The top five states for CRP acreage are:
1. Colorado: 2,978,741 acres
2. South Dakota: 2,626,430 acres
3. Nebraska: 2,423,361 acres
4. Texas: 2,225,310 acres
5. Kansas: 2,040,412 acres

USDA has also allocated $21 million for projects to enhance the monitoring, assessment, and evaluation of the Conservation Reserve Program.

USDA launches initiative to preserve wildlife corridors across public and private lands.

USDA agencies, including the Forest Service and Farm Service Agency, will collaborate with state, tribal, and federal partners to protect wildlife corridors on public and private lands, officials announced Monday. The initiative emphasizes voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs to promote habitat connectivity.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack directed the agencies to integrate wildlife corridor considerations into their planning processes. With 193 million acres of federal forests and 880 million acres of private farmland at stake, the effort aims to break down bureaucratic barriers and ensure sustainable conservation across jurisdictions.

How Do Wind, Solar, Renewable Energy Effect Land Values?

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 18:31:52 GMT

Since the signing of the Paris Agreement and its Net Zero by 2050 iniative, the ripple effects are still being ironed out as the demand for renewable energy increases.

With expanding renewable energy installations such as wind and solar, The Top Producer Podcast host Paul Neiffer asked David Muth of Peoples Company Capital Markets , the Investment platform for Peoples Company, how those land uses change long term land values.

“We’re really seeing emerging revenue streams from our land base–outside of the ag production,” he says. “We’re trying to get our arms wrapped around the asset management strategy and really get this well positioned. So over the next 10 or 20 years, we’re expanding revenue right and capturing that correctly.”

Muth shares the estimate that over $1 trillion dollars a year is being invested globally in the low-carbon energy transition.

“If we step back and look at what that means for farmland, we’re taking our energy production system from highly centralized production facilities and we have to distribute it,” he says.

The team at Peoples Company used the Princeton Net Zero America study as the basis scenario for its work, which shows if there are 6,000 wind turbines in Iowa today, it needs to increase to about 48,000, which could bring almost $1 billion a year in additional revenue back to the landowners from the turbines.

Muth highlights the considerations for landowners with solar power are different than wind.

“With solar, it’s different. There’s certainly a free market element to this where the revenue streams and the value equations associated with the land in different areas will drive just how high they’ll push those numbers,” he says.

Solar’s Impact On Rural Property Values

He notes he’s seen annual leases with standard escalators for $1,100, and there are additional state and federal incentives.

“In Illinois, there’s been a big push, and we’ve seen options for solar development contracts on some of the best of the best farm ground for $1,400. It is what they’re talking about as a starting place on these assets. The core question is because it’s a fundamental shift in land use, how do you look at the underlying land value where you put solar in place?”

Thinking of recent trends, he says Illinois farm land has appreciated 7% a year, but the future appreciation rate is unknown just as the productivity of the land after solar panels are removed is unknown.

“It’s part of this sort of chaos that landowners are having sort through,” he says. “That’s where a pretty detailed discounted cash flow and understanding how much am I really making on that $1,400 an acre lease payment with a 2% escalator if the underlying farmland value doesn’t appreciate the way that the rest of that highly productive Illinois farm ground is going to appreciate.”

Pop-Up Solar: Can Farmers Make Fertilizer, Fuel and Electricity from the Sun?

Muth says the biofuels industry growth will also effect land values as the production of corn and soybeans is needed for Sustainable Aviation Fuel and renewable diesel.
He discusses more about wind, solar, biofuels as well as carbon storage opportunities on The Top Producer Podcast.

USDA May Now Face Court Challenge in Its Implementation of ERP for 2022 Losses

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:19:09 GMT

USDA is responding to criticism from Republican lawmakers regarding their management of the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) for 2022 losses .

In October, USDA said over $3 billion is available through the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) to assist row crop and specialty crop growers in offsetting losses caused by natural disasters in 2022.

A USDA spokesperson explained that the main issue is a lack of funding from Congress. They stated that Congress allocated only $3.2 billion to cover losses totaling over $10 billion. This funding gap forced USDA to make difficult choices to prioritize assistance for those in greatest need. The spokesperson added that if members of Congress are dissatisfied with these choices, they should advocate for more resources to enable the USDA to fully compensate farmers for their losses.

Related Story: Pressure Continues to be Applied to USDA on 2022 ERP

Some Republican House and Senate members have expressed their concerns to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, particularly regarding the new payment formula used for ERP in 2022. They believe this formula, different from the one used in 2020 and 2021, may result in significant producers receiving minimal or no assistance. Link to a blog report from the GOP staff at the Senate Ag Committee. Meanwhile, Senator John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee, this week led a group of senators in requesting a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of USDA’s implementation of disaster assistance for producer losses occurring in 2022.

(Farm Journal)

Comments: USDA is not being totally informative on this topic. It initially provided an estimate of the disaster funding needed and that was woefully underestimated. USDA now says agency says it notified lawmakers of the $10 billion in estimated damages, but Congress chose to authorize only $3.2 billion instead. Congress is also at fault here because while lawmaker criticism has accelerated recently, this report and others talking with farmers clearly noted the major problems with USDA’s implementation of the program months ago. Farm-state lawmakers had time to act and like so many other things in Congress, they did not act. Meanwhile, USDA’s suggestion that Congress simply provide more funding is not the whole answer: Congress should no longer assume USDA is going to implement disaster aid programs in a favorable manner relative to production agriculture and instead for a select group of underserved farmers and other nuances. USDA claims the agency’s new methodology will result in around 170,000 farmers receiving more aid.

Bottom line, according to a lawyer contact: “USDA is talking nonsense. USDA has dealt with this in the past and has always calculated total benefits to each producer and then applied one factor to pare payments back, so they fit within budget. But this administration politicized the payments by applying six different factors to fully indemnify some farmers and punitively harm others who suffered the greatest loss. In other words, it applied a back door pay limit. It also arbitrarily limited refund of premiums and fees paid to ‘underserved’ farmers. In doing so, USDA plainly broke the law. If USDA does not comply with the law and Congress does not step in and defend the law it passed. then it will be up to a court. Courts look at deliberate violations of the law with a jaundiced eye in establishing remedies.”

Senators Look To Rein-In Abuse Of Farm Payment System

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 11:43:57 GMT

U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have introduced bipartisan legislation called the Farm Program Integrity Act of 2023 to rein-in what they call abuse of the farm payment system.

“Too often, farm subsidy payments go to those who don’t need the support or aren’t even engaged in farming,” Brown said in a news release the senators distributed jointly.

The proposed legislation would create a hard cap of $250,000 in total commodity support for a single farm operation. It would also require that beneficiaries of the system spend at least 50% of each year engaged in farm labor or management.

“General partnerships and qualified joint ventures would now be treated just like corporations or other limited liability entities is my understanding,” Paul Neiffer, CPA and Principal with CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, told Chip Flory on AgriTalk.

“Under current law, a general partnership with six equal owners would have a payment limit of $750,000. This Act would reduce it to $250,000,” Neiffer adds.

Help For Family Farms

Grassley’s decision to support the Farm Program Integrity legislation is consistent with his repeated efforts to put limits on farm program payments, Flory notes.

“He doesn’t say that big is bad. But what he does emphasize is he wants it to be a program for family farms,” Flory says.

Grassley says too many farm program dollars go to the largest U.S. farming operations.

"(We need to make) sure that the farm program is in fact a safety net, but for medium and small farmers as opposed to those that farm 10,000 to 15,000 acres,” Grassley said earlier this week. “I don’t have anything against big farms getting bigger, but I don’t think we should subsidize them to get bigger.”

He adds that just 10% of U.S. farming operations receive 70% of all yearly farm payments.

“It isn’t right to send bloated farm payments to people who are more familiar with an office chair than a tractor seat,” Grassley said, in the senators’ joint release. “This bill brings honesty to the farm payment system and prioritizes farming families over mega farms. Hard-earned tax dollars should only be sent to hard-working farmers – those with calluses on their hands and dirt under their fingernails.”

Good Intentions, Questionable Results?

Neiffer cautions that the Act, if passed, could have unintended negative consequences for family farms and their owners.

“Currently a large general partnership can have unlimited active family members and each can receive up to the maximum payment limit. This legislation would limit the payment to $250,000 which likely means these larger general partnerships will now break down into smaller two-person partnerships, which will create more tax returns, more administrative burden on the local FSA office, etc.

“I know that Sens. Grassley and Brown mean well, but in my opinion, there should be no limit on entities,” Neiffer adds. “It should simply be a limit on the owners. If they really want to limit the payments, implementing the labor requirement would be more than sufficient.”

With the focus of conservative Republicans looking to cut government spending, Neiffer says he thinks the proposed legislation could have support.

“A month ago, I would have said it has no chance, but with what’s going on in the House, maybe this has a chance of coming into the new farm bill,” he says.

The AgriTalk conversation between Neiffer and Host Chip Flory is available below:

In other news, see:

Senate Votes to Limit Foreign Land Ownership

Carbon Intensity Is Going To Be A Team Sport

Is Mexico Banning GMO Corn to Protect Native Corn Varieties?

Crop Insurance, Production Costs, ERP Among Key Topics at Senate Ag Farm Bill Hearing

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 21:00:25 GMT

A Senate Ag Committee hearing Thursday on the new farm bill raised a issue that is now evident: the Title 1 farm bill safety net can no longer deal with the current ag environment of rising production costs and relatively high prices for some commodities. USDA officials also faced criticism about its handling of Phase 2 payments via the Emergency Relief Program (ERP).

Other topics that have previously surfaced included Republican concerns about climate and conservation changes to crop insurance, while Democrats continued to urge expansion of the program to more producers.

Need for change

Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said the 2018 Farm Bill largely lived up to expectations, but she suggested its successor must deal with several challenges: increasingly damaging natural disasters and accelerated costs of production.

“There are still gaps in the farm safety net as farmers continue to face global market uncertainty and climate-fueled weather disasters,” she said. “While many commodity prices are at historic highs, which is good, we also know that land and fertilizer and input costs are also near record highs.”

Farm safety net gaps

Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.) said a focus on boosting nutrition and climate programs has obscured the fact that farm safety net programs like Price Loss Coverage (PLC) are ill equipped to deal with the current situation.

Related articles: Stepped-Up Basis Leaning in Favor of Rural America on House Ways and Means Panel

“Prices for many of our major commodities would have to drop sharply before the current Title 1 Price Loss Coverage safety net would start to work,” Boozman said, noting corn prices would need to plummet 46% before PLC would provide enrolled farmers any assistance. “By the time corn prices fell that low, the significant damage would have already been done.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) asked if USDA had looked at how the two safety net programs respond to inflation, such as adjusting reference prices — which trigger payments under the PLC program.

“I will tell you my legislative staff is always quick to tell me to emphasize that Congress writes the farm bill, and then that’s going to be important here too, obviously those reference prices are in statute,” USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie told Tuberville. “When we talk to producers, there’s lots of concern about obviously rising input costs,” he added, but then emphasized USDA can only operate farm safety net programs as dictated by Congress.

USDA disaster aid implementation was both praised and criticized

Democrats and Republicans agreed with farmers who have complained about USDA’s methodology for payments under Phase 2 of the ERP, saying they do not adequately compensate farmers for their losses. “I appreciate USDA’s efforts through Phase 1 of ERP, which generally worked well in supporting producers with crop losses and [2020 and 2021],” said Sen John Thune (R-S.D.). “But the Phase 2 methodology… often does not accurately reflect crop losses that Congress meant to cover.”

Thune urged USDA consider reverting to the approach used in Phase 1 of the ERP effort for 2022 losses, a suggestion echoed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who said farmers in her state “are grateful for the quick and effective approach taken during the implementation of ERP Phase 1,” but “a number of them have been less enthusiastic of the income tax-based approach taken during the rollout of ERP Phase 2.”

Bonnie said USDA’s approach on ERP Phase 2 focused on ensuring more producers had access to aid, but said if there are resources remaining after the effort the department may look at a shallow loss effort to address some of the concerns with Phase 2.

Related articles: The Cost of a Farm Bill: 2023 Row Crop Priorities

Bonnie said ad hoc programs like ERP have helped farmers facing disaster-related losses, but he stressed that federal crop insurance remains a key risk management tool, and that USDA has worked to expand the program to cover more producers.

Crop insurance and climate intersect

Boozman again raised a concern voiced by many Republicans about any move to use crop insurance to incentivize climate or conservation practices — which GOP members contend could undermine the actuarial soundness of the program and move it away from its core focus as a risk management tool.

“Can you commit to making sure that any efforts to expand the crop insurance programs are science based, peer reviewed, and protect the integrity of the program,” he asked Bonnie, saying a “one-size fits all” approach that elevates certain practices like cover cropping could disadvantage farmers in areas where those practices are not practical.

Bonnie responded that “with respect to crop insurance, everything we have to do has to be actuarially sound as we’ve got to maintain the integrity of crop insurance.” He said recent incentives offered to farmers for cover cropping have taken the form of premium rebates — not changes to premiums or the overall premium subsidy paid by the government.

Stabenow praised federal crop insurance, calling it “the number one risk management tool for producers.” However, improvements are needed, she said, promising improvements to the program, “including specialty crop growers, organic producers, beginning and diversified farmers.”

Regarding prevent plant coverage

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) asked if USDA was looking at expanding prevented plant coverage under crop insurance, which pays farmers when they are unable to plant an insured crop due to extreme weathers. He noted eligibility currently hinges on a farmer being able to plant, insure and harvest crops in one of the four preceding crop years — known as the four-in-one rule — and some farmers in the West are at more risk of losing coverage due to prolonged drought conditions.

“One in four is very regionalized in a lot of cases,” acknowledged USDA Administrator Marcia Bunger. “So, for this coming year, we’ve made an exception for several western states to step outside of that one and four,” adding USDA would consult with stakeholders over the next year about a potential long-term solution to the issue.

Related articles: How USDA’s $2.8 Billion Climate-Smart Investment Might Impact Your Operation

USDA climate program efforts were raised by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who noted concern over USDA’s move to tap more than $3 billion from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to fund its Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) effort that funds climate-smart ag pilot projects.

“Spending over $3 billion without input from Congress is a serious concern for everybody in the Congress,” Grassley stated.

Grassley then asked Bonnie if USDA had any plans to tap CCC for additional USDA programs. Bonnie reiterated what USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has said — that PCSC falls within the CCC’s charter as it looks to expand and create new markets for ag commodities.

However, Bonnie ultimately said there were no plans for new CCC-backed programs under the Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) mission area.

USDA Withholds the Names of Farm Subsidy Payment Recipients

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 21:21:34 GMT

USDA withholds releasing the names of everyone who receives farm subsidy payments, hiding the names of a portion of farm subsidy recipients.

An advocacy group that publishes the data says that the decision to withhold recipient names obscures how billions of dollars of taxpayer money is spent.

Read more: Ag Groups File Lawsuit to Challenge EPA’s “Vague” New WOTUS Definition

“It’s a mystery as to why the USDA began to hide the names of many recipients,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs for the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

How it Works

EWG files a Freedom of Information Request every year to obtain information about who receives farm subsidies, where the recipients live and how much they get. That information then goes into a public database that dates back to 1995. The most recent version, containing data from 2020 and 2021, was released Wednesday.

Read more: Vilsack Focuses on Farm Bill Possibilities with National Sustainable Ag Coalition

Faber said USDA told them the changes occurred because of a software update to its reporting system in 2019, during the Trump administration.

USDA has denied the nonprofit’s appeals requesting the names of the obscured individuals.

Speaker McCarthy Selects Unruly House Rules Panel

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 20:17:01 GMT

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) issued the new GOP roster for the House Rules Committee Monday, and he made good on his pledges to give his conference’s hard right three positions on the powerful panel, which decides along with the speaker the bills going to the floor and the scope of amendments and debate.

He named Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) to the panel. All have track records of holding up major spending legislation, emergency disaster aid and forcing votes on divisive amendments against the wishes of GOP leadership.

Key for the Ag Sector

Norman in the past unsuccessfully pushed crop insurance amendments that would have cut premium incentives/subsidies by 15% for producers with specified adjusted gross incomes. Another amendment, co-sponsored by Norman, would have effectively muted the harvest price option.

Bottom Line

If Norman, Massie and Roy are in agreement, they can functionally block legislation, even bills McCarthy supports, from getting to the floor — unless McCarthy and his allies can garner Democratic votes on the legislation. But the minority usually votes no on the 9-4 split panel.

Farm Share of the U.S. Food Dollar Hit a Record Low; What Does this Mean for Producers?

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 14:14:10 GMT

The farm share of the U.S. food dollar has been tracked since 1993. The 2021 data provided by the USDA on Monday shows U.S. farm share hit an all-time low.

(Farm Journal)

USDA found that out of every food dollar spent, the farmer receives 14.5¢. This is down from 2020’s 15.5¢.

Seth Meyer, USDA’s chief economist, says the decrease in return doesn’t necessarily mean a producer is making less in a given year.

“If the farm share’s slice of the product pie is growing, while the pie as a whole is growing, the farm is better off in the long run,” he says.

However, Meyer says there are “bits and pieces” of the piece that eat up both food and farm shares even when overall prices go up. Some of these include:
• How much consumers are eating out
• Commodity prices
• Wholesale trade prices
• Transportation and freight costs

The Year Ahead

According to Meyer, eating out attributed most to the farm share decrease this year, but there may be next year.

Looking to 2022’s farm share predictions, Meyer thinks the trend of food away from home will slow, along with the disruptions from supply chains. However, other political and biological factors such as the war in Ukraine and avian influenza could put the coming year in jeopardy.

Do You Know Your Value-Added Opportunities?

To make the most of the farm share, Meyer suggests producers look at every angle of value-added that’s at their disposal. He offers an example:

“In cattle, you have to consider if there are some value-added aspects beyond simply sending your calf to the feedlot or finished cattle to the slaughter plant,” he says. “Are there some elements that you can try and grab above that from a marketing standpoint? Or do you focus on just being a great cattle producer that makes efficient gains?”

Meyers says many opportunities in both incentives and consumer preferences often go untapped as well. He challenges producers to weigh the options.

“If consumers want that [climate-smart option] and are willing to pay, is USDA’s Climate Smart Commodities program an opportunity to make your operation better off when it comes to the share of the food dollar? You have to ask yourself these questions,” Meyer says.

More from USDA :

How USDA’s $2.8 Billion Climate-Smart Investment Might Impact Your Operation
Know Someone Who Wants to Farm or Ranch, But They’re Not Sure Where to Start? New USDA Funds Could Help
$670 Million Awarded by USDA to Farm, Meatpacking and Grocery Workers for their ‘Essential Role’ in U.S. Food Systems During Pandemic

USDA Announces Phase 2 of ERP Along With New Aid Opportunities

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 15:05:21 GMT

USDA announced the launch of Phase 2 of its Emergency Relief Program (ERP) with Phase 1 paying out $7.15 billion to eligible producers.

Who Qualifies for ERP Phase 2?

Phase 2 is targeted to those who suffered losses in 2020 and 2021 but may not have received any payments under Phase 1 for losses in allowable gross revenue for traditionally insurable crops and specialty crops intended to be commercially marketed.

The payments will be based on the difference in farm revenue between a typical year and the disaster year and are to avoid windfall or duplicate payments.

USDA said that the signup deadline for Phase 1 ERP, which was previously extended indefinitely, will now be set to Dec. 16.

Can You Defer ERP Payments?

As you’ll recall from Paul Neiffer’s article , only certain ERP payments can be deferred.

According to Neiffer, if the payment relates directly to damage occurred in 2021, then the payment can’t be deferred until 2023. But if the damage if really for the crop that was harvested in 2022 and damage was for drought during the growing period, then it should be able to be deferred.

As a reminder, here are the three requirements to defer crop insurance proceeds:

• Farmer is on the cash method of accounting (almost all are),
• Farmer normally reports more than 50% of total sales in the year after harvest (most do), and
• The farmer can only defer to the year after the damage was incurred

The last item is what blows up any ability to defer Phase 1 payments. These payments are for damage that occurred in 2020 and 2021. 2022 is the latest you could defer 2021 payments and since you collected them this year, you are stuck with reporting these payments in 2022.

More Payment Opportunities

USDA also mentioned the new Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program (PARP) will be available to help those with ag commodities that saw revenue declines in calendar 2020 compared with 2018 or 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agency said PARP is aimed at addressing “gaps in previous pandemic assistance which was targeted at price loss or lack of market access, rather than overall revenue.”

Under PARP, USDA says producers will use revenue information available from “most tax records,” and urged producers to have those documents available for the past few years along with supporting materials.

According to USDA, the documentation is similar to what producers had to provide for the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program 2 (CFAP 2) effort which allowed for 2018 or 2019 to be used as the benchmark year.

More on ag business:

Can You Defer 2022 ERP?
Paul Neiffer: When Can Inflation Help You?

Labor Shortage? Data Shows Added Unemployment Payments are Crippling Employers' Ability to Find Workers

Tue, 11 May 2021 16:15:45 GMT

Restaurants closing early. Sign after sign plastered along roadsides with businesses looking for help. The hiring issue is evident in many regions of the country, crippling everything from manufacturing to the restaurant industry.

“In talking with my guys that do the welding for us in ordering to steel, they said it all goes back to the steel mills,” says Nic Beck of Carks Ag Supply based in Nebraska, a company that produces seed tenders. “It’s not a shortage of iron ore. It’s not a recycled steel shortage. It comes down to labor.”

And in the Pacific Northwest, farmer Shay Myers is also dealing with a labor shortage. He pushed out a TikTok video that went viral after he pointed out 350 pounds of asparagus that was on the verge of going to waste.

“We can’t get the labor,” he said on the video. “We can’t get people to show up and do the work for $16 an hour, with housing, transportation and all of those things. What we usually do is bring people in on a H2A visa, but the border is so screwed up, that we can’t get people across. So, they are telling us it’s 30 to 45 days before we have laborers in this field to pick this crop.”

While Myers points to the border being the issue for him, the lack of available workers in the U.S. is creating bottlenecks, and it’s driven in part by a shortage of truck drivers.

The California Farm Bureau says during carrot and onion harvests in South California, they are seeing up to 30% fewer drivers than before the pandemic.

“In order to alleviate some of the shortage, we need to get President Biden to enact the Stafford Act, as Donald Trump did last year,” says Joe Antonini, president of Antonini Enterprises. “This would allow the weights of the loads to go from 80,000 pounds maximum to 88,000 pounds, a 10% weight tolerance. Given that, there would be some relief on the amount of drivers needed to bring in the harvest.”

The Labor Debate

Purdue University’s Jayson Lusk says there’s not necessarily a shortage of workers in the U.S.

“It’s a little perplexing,” says Lusk. “You mentioned the word ‘shortage.’ If you actually looked at data on employment, there’s actually a lot fewer workers in the restaurant industry, and a little bit fewer workers in food manufacturing and in grocery retail. So that would seem to suggest, well, we don’t really have a shortage.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows wages and earnings have increased significantly, especially in the grocery and retail food sectors.

“Wages are getting pulled up, so you would think that would pull in more workers into those sectors. But we’re not really seeing that at the moment. That’s really where this perception of a shortage comes from,” Lusk says.

(Farm Journal)

According to AP on Tuesday, U.S. employers posted a record number of available jobs in March, illustrating starkly the rush of businesses seeking to find new workers as the economy expands. Yet total job gains increased only modestly, according to a Labor Department report issued Tuesday.

JUST IN: WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. employers posted a record number of available jobs in March. Job openings rose nearly 8%, to 8.1 million in March, the most on records dating back to December 2000.
— AgDay TV (@AgDayTV) May 11, 2021

The data comes after the April jobs report last week that fell far short of economist expectations, largely because companies appear unable to find the workers they need. Data that shows it’s not a shortage of workers, it’s a shortage of people willing to work.

“That the natural question: why? Why are people showing back up at work? And I think there are several possible explanations,” he says.

In the latest Kansas City Federal Reserve Manufacturing Report , one manufacturer said, “Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

By the Numbers

The issue is also heating up in Washington, D.C. The Labor Department report on Friday showed 266,000 new jobs were created in April, which was much smaller than the 1 million expected by a Reuters poll. The report also showed a drop in temporary help positions.

Today, someone with a $15-per-hour job, working 40-hour weeks, would bring home $600 a week. However, in Kentucky, the maximum unemployment pay is $569 per week, plus the extra $300 per week passed in the Biden Administration’s American Rescue plan. In Kansas, those who were getting $488 for unemployment before, are now getting $788 with the added federal benefit. The numbers show instead of getting paid to work, some Americans can make more money by simply not working at all.

“I haven’t seen empirical estimates of the effect, but it has to be having some effect,” says Lusk. “If people can stay at home and make something similar to what they might at work, that’s going to keep people out of the workforce.

(Farm Journal)

The extra $300 per week federal unemployment benefit was extended through the beginning of September as some states are now taking the matter in their own hands. Just last week, Montana’s governor announced the state will end its participation in the federal unemployment program, which means unemployed workers will no longer receive the extra $300 per week. Instead, Montana’s governor says the state will launch a new program to provide bonuses to unemployed workers who return to work.

The Biden administration held a press briefing on Friday and dismisses concerns that the added unemployment benefits are causing hiring issues across the U.S.

“It’s clear there are people who are not ready and able to go back into the labor force,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

The True Cost of Fewer Workers

And as food service employers offer sign-on bonuses or pay more to find people to fill those jobs, basic economics show there’s no such thing as a free lunch as those added costs will get passed on through the menu.

“It gets pushed in both directions,” adds Lusk. “It has a depressing effect on commodity prices, despite the highs we’re seeing at the moment, but also is going to result in higher retail food prices. That extra cost in the system is going to ultimately be born - at least in part - by the food consumer.

The labor debacle is coming at a time when commodity prices are also racing higher.

“We are starting to see those higher farm commodity prices show up in higher retail food prices,” says Lusk. “If you just look at the year-over-year change, it doesn’t look crazy, it doesn’t look outside the norms. But I think the cumulative effect is really starting to appear in the data. And really, over the course of the last year, we’re seeing retail food prices starting to tick up quite a bit.”

As corn prices gained $1 in just two weeks, the rise in commodities may not be over yet, as the debate over inflation also heats up.

“At the moment, it looks like those high commodity prices may be with us,” says Lusk. “I think we’ll probably continue to see that in our food prices and our meat prices.”

Just last week, wholesale choice beef prices reached prices not seen since the early weeks of the pandemic. With added expenses and labor challenges for those trying to serve customers, it’s making for an expensive and challenging return to normal.

Subsidies

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Need for change

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Regarding prevent plant coverage

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How it Works

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Key for the Ag Sector

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Bottom Line

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