Joe Outlaw and Bart L. Fischer
On Monday, December 8th, President Trump and USDA Secretary Rollins announced the creation of the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program, a new round of economic assistance totaling $12 billion for the 2025 crop, with $11 billion for row crop farmers. While details such as individual commodity payment rates have not been made available, it was announced that the structure of FBA would be similar to the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP) that producers received earlier this year due to low commodity prices received for the 2024 crop. Recall the ECAP program provided assistance based on a producer’s planted acres of eligible commodities and 50% of acres that were prevented from being planted. According to USDA, acres that were prevented from being planted will not be eligible for FBA.
Individual payment rates are expected to be announced the week of December 22nd. Payments are expected to be released by February 28, 2026. It was announced that payment limits would be different from ECAP. Payment limits will be $155,000 per person or legal entity, and the AGI limits will be $900,000. In ECAP, producers could double their limit if 75% of their AGI was from farming. The new assistance does not have this provision.
The last two years have been terrible financial years for most crop farmers across the United States. While producers will be grateful for the assistance, their estimated losses for the 2025 crop exceed $40 billion. The previous ECAP program paid 26% of losses to producers for the 2024 crop. Based on the estimates of loss for the 2025 crop, it appears the newly announced program will likely cover a similar portion of producer losses.
The announcement and subsequent details of the program when released will allow lenders to include the amount of the assistance in producer’s loan packages which should help those producers who are trying to secure operating loans for the 2026 crop year.
Outlaw, Joe, and Bart L. Fischer. “Administration Providing Economic Assistance Payments to Struggling Farmers.” Southern Ag Today 5(50.4). December 11, 2025. Permalink
