Authors: Joe Outlaw and Bart Fischer
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry released its discussion draft of the Agricultural Act of 2026 on June 23rd with the expectation to advance the legislation after the summer recess. The House of Representatives has passed their version of the farm bill and await the Senate passing their version so that differences can be worked out in conference. Prior to passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last summer, there had been a lot of discussion regarding the need for—and the impacts of—ad hoc assistance that had been provided to farmers due to the inadequacies of the current farm bill programs. We have discussed these issues here, here and here. The hope had been that, as we move forward, the improvements in OBBBA would reduce the need for ad hoc assistance, with the changes to Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) providing a meaningful safety net for producers when needed.
So, what’s the problem? Quite simply, even though OBBBA raised producer payment limits to $160,000 per person or legal entity per year from $125,000, when times are bad, it simply is not enough assistance to be a viable safety net for a commercial sized farm. Lest anyone gets hung up on the use of the term “commercial,” here we use it to describe a family farm that attempts to make their living primarily from farming.
Every major agricultural group in this country has advocated for additional ad hoc economic and physical loss assistance that has come in the form of the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) program, and the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP). The ECAP payment limitation was $125,000 per person or legal entity (doubled to $250,000 if at least 75% of your average gross income comes from farming, ranching, or forestry). The payment limit for the FBA program was $155,000 per person or legal entity. The Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP) has provided physical loss assistance to producers for the 2023 and 2024 crop years, thus far. There is a $125,000 producer payment limit per program year (doubled to $250,000 if at least 75% of your average adjusted gross income comes from farming, ranching, or forestry).
While covering different types of losses over the past three years, $37.09 billion has been provided to producers, with each program having its own payment limitation. While we can extol the virtues of ending ad hoc assistance—ranging from the fact that it is uncertain and delivered long after the losses occur to the fact that it is likely contributing to the stickiness of input costs—there is virtually no way that farm bill programs (i.e., ARC and PLC) could replace that kind of assistance, in part because of the $160,000 payment limitation per person or legal entity. If the payment limits are not further addressed to reflect economic realities, then demands for ad hoc assistance will continue in the near term and Congress will have gone to a lot of trouble make the safety net programs more meaningful to producers only to see payment limits render them less effective.
Recommended citation format: Outlaw, Joe, and Bart L. Fischer. “The Next Farm Bill Needs to Address Economic Realities.” Southern Ag Today 6(28.4). July 9, 2026. Permalink
