OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Farmers are now learning how much aid they can expect to receive from a $12 billion package that President Donald Trump announced earlier this month.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released the figures Wednesday for how much aid per acre farmers can plan on for each row crop. The details arrived after most farmers have already met with their bankers to arrange financing for next year's crops and placed orders for the seed and fertilizer
they will need. But officials have promised that the payments should arrive by the end of February.
Soybean farmers have been hit especially hard by Trump's trade war with China, which stopped buying any American crops after Trump announced his tariffs this spring. China is the world's largest buyer of soybeans. This aid package is expected to help farmers weather the trade disruptions until China buys more soybeans under an agreement announced in October and until provisions of Trump's massive budget bill take effect later this year.
Soybean farmers will get $30.88 per acre while corn farmers will receive $44.36. Another crop hit hard when China stopped buying was sorghum, and those farmers will get $48.11 per acre. The amounts are based on a USDA formula on the cost of production.
But farmers say the aid won't solve all their problems as they continue to deal with the soaring costs of fertilizer, seeds and labor that make it hard to turn a profit right now. Some agricultural trade groups have said they worry that thousands of farmers could go out of business, but others have said they believe most farmers have the financial resources and equity needed to survive.
Kentucky soybean farmer Caleb Ragland, who was president of the American Soybean Association until recently, said the aid is “a Band-Aid on a deep wound. We need competition and opportunities in the market to make our future brighter.”
Most farmers remain steadfast supporters of Trump even after the disruptions caused by the trade war. They generally support many of his other policies and believe they will get a better trade deal in the end.
These aid payments will add up to $11 billion for row crop farmers who raise corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum and other crops. Another $1 billion will be put aside for specialty crops as the administration works to better understand the circumstances for those farmers.
After Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea in October, the White House said Beijing had promised to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the calendar year, plus 25 million metric tons a year in each of the next three years. Officials have said China is on track to meet the 12 million metric ton goal by the end of February, but so far China has only purchased about 4.3 million metric tons of soybeans, according to the latest USDA figures.
Beijing has yet to confirm any commitment to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans for this season, but the Chinese embassy in Washington said earlier this month that “agricultural trade cooperation between China and the United States is proceeding in an orderly manner.”
The aid payments will be capped at $155,000 per farmer or entity, and only farms that make less than $900,000 in adjusted gross income will be eligible. During the first Trump administration, a number of large farms found ways around the payment limits and collected millions.
The USDA said it would use a formula that estimates production costs to come up with a per-acre payment for each type of crop. The USDA says the average size of the 1.88 million farms nationwide was 466 acres last year, but many farmers are much larger than that as larger operations have continued to buy up neighboring farms over time.
