Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins used National Ag Day on Tuesday to announce the release of $10 billion in economic assistance payments for growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice and other field crops.
The payments were authorized by Congress in a year-end spending bill in December. The aid is intended to compensate growers for a downturn in commodity markets in 2024.
Producers will have from Wednesday until Aug. 15 to apply for the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program. Producers will initially receive 85% of the payment they are eligible for to ensure there is enough money to go around, USDA officials told reporters Tuesday. Farmers could receive a second payment sometime after Aug. 15.
The Farm Service Agency will provide pre-filled applications to farmers who filed 2024 acreage reports for eligible commodities.
The payment rates per acre for major commodities:
- Corn $42.91
- Soybeans $29.76
- Wheat $30.69
- Cotton $84.74
- Rice $76.94
- Peanuts $75.51
- Sorghum $42.52
- Barley $21.67
- Oats $77.66
- Canola $31.83
“Sky-high interest rates, coupled with rock-bottom commodity prices, paired with absurd overregulation, married to sector-specific artificial scarcities, have sent our farmers on a rollercoaster ride that makes it impossible to plan, impossible to invest, and impossible to pay the bills,” Rollins said in an op-ed published with Agri-Pulse.
“The effects are felt not just in the lives and livelihoods of farmers, but in the grocery bills and dinner tables of every American household. So, on this National Agriculture Day 2025, I have a message direct from President Donald J. Trump: help is here. To meet the crisis in American agriculture, we are disbursing the funds — which will aggregate to more than ten billion dollars — from the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program.”
Under the law, payments from the program were to be calculated as either 26% of the economic loss for each eligible crop, or a minimum payment rate worth 8% of the product of the statutory reference price times the Price Loss Coverage program yield.
According to a University of Missouri analysis released in December after the spending bill passed, farmers in Texas, the largest producer of cotton, the crop with the largest payment per acre, will get the largest share of payments, or about $964 million in payments.
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Farmers in Iowa are expected to get the second largest amount, followed by Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota.
The law set a payment limit of $125,000 for individuals or entities other than a joint venture or general partnership who earn less than 75% of their average gross income from farming. For individuals or entities with more than 75% of their income from farming, the limit is $250,000.
The payment caps are separate from limits in farm bill commodity programs.
In her op-ed, Rollins also said the administration would "soon unveil" $21 billion in disaster assistance that was authorized by the same year-end spending bill for losses incurred in 2023 and 2024.
For more news, go to Agri-Pulse.com.
