Dave Gaul has been following the news closely and calling his representatives and local Farm Service Agency regularly. The Iowa farmer is anxious for an update about some $30 billion in relief for farmers passed in Congress late last year, and he said no one can give him a straight answer.
“Even for my modest-sized farm of 320 acres, the aid would be most welcome and not insubstantial,” Gaul said in an email. “My own bank loan officer was even including the program’s potential payout in his year-end financial reports for his customers, including myself.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has to distribute $10 billion in economic relief payments passed by Congress in December this month.
The payments, which will be calculated using a per-acre formula, will go mainly to farmers who grow corn, soy and wheat. Lawmakers also allocated another $20 billion in disaster relief payments, which will go to farmers who experienced economic losses from recent natural disasters.
The payments passed alongside a second extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. They’re meant to bolster farmers’ incomes and offset gaps in farm bill support programs – which were set in 2018 before major events like the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and a trade war impacted the economy.
Gaul said it’s been harder than other years to make ends meet. He farms corn, soybeans and oats, along with a small herd of cows on his third-generation farm in western Iowa. He said that smaller farms like his are having an especially tough time, and relief payments from the government can help farmers make it to the next year.
Brooke Rollins, the newly-appointed Secretary of Agriculture, has promised that the disbursements are coming. When Rollins spoke in Colorado on March 2, she assured farmers that she has a plan in place to distribute the relief as soon as possible.
“Our approach is guided by three principles,” she said “We want the process to be simple, transparent and fast.”
Rollins said the department is on track to start applications on or before March 20, according to a USDA press release.
Ben Brown, a senior agriculture research associate at the University of Missouri, said that some farmers are counting on the financial aid to prepare for this season and next year.
Farmers in Texas, Illinois and Iowa could receive the largest portion of the funding, according to an estimate from the University of Missouri.
“They're trying to make plans,” Brown said. “They want to make decisions for their operation. They want the most information to be able to make sound business decisions.”
Some farmers – and their bankers – have already factored expected relief payments into this year’s financial assets, including Gaul. Many farmers have been operating on razor-thin margins in recent years. And any interruption in income could create a ripple effect into next year, Brown said.
Jennifer Ifft is a professor and extension specialist at Kansas State University. She emphasized the tough decisions farmers have to make as businesspeople and said it’s difficult to base long term plans on one-off relief payments like these.
“It's a new program,” Ifft said. “And so if you knew exactly how it was going to work and when it was going to come, then you could use it during your discussions to lenders… You could account for it in your production decisions, your investment decisions. With ad hoc payments, there is an unknown factor by the very nature.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
