We have a math problem in agriculture.
U.S. farmers are getting $12 billion in Farmer Bridge Assistance payments on 2025 crops. As of late March, the Illinois Farm Service Agency has paid out $643.5 million in FBA payments to Illinois farmers.
Then during National Agriculture Week, March 15-21, President Donald Trump told a crowd of farmers on the White House lawn that in his first year back in the White House, “farm income has soared by 20%.”
So maybe it’s more like a word problem: If a train travels at 60 mph with 4,000 bushels of corn per 100 cars, and a farmer can’t sell it for a profit, does any of it matter?
Trump likely got that number from a recent Farm Bureau analysis that showed farm income up from $128 billion in 2024 to $155 billion in 2025, largely driven by a 2024 aid package. That means he’s taking credit for a 20% increase in farm income that was largely driven by an aid package passed during the Biden administration. Wild.
Meanwhile, you’d be hard-pressed to find a banker who’d agree that counting bailout money as farm income is a good idea
“In no way, shape or form should we be counting government payments as a sign of a healthy farm economy,” said Jonathan Coppess — not a banker but an ag policy expert at University of Illinois.
Reality bites
In the past eight years, farmers have seen four separate ad hoc payment programs totaling $97 billion:
- $23 billion in 2018 Market Facilitation Payments for the first trade war
- $31 billion in 2021 for COVID-19 losses
- $31 billion in the 2024 American Relief Act
- $12 billion in 2026 bridge payments
I’m more of a words gal, but those numbers add up.
Coppess argued that continual disaster payments act as a blocker to necessary adjustments in agriculture. They flow through the farmer’s hands to fertilizer, equipment, seed and chemical companies that have no incentive to lower prices.
He’s right; good luck convincing a landlord that cash rents need to come down when farmers are getting $12 billion.
“To the extent the payments keep prices up, they’re doing more harm than good to farmers over the long run,” Coppess said.
Of course, payments help in the short run. They’ll keep a lot of farmers afloat this year, big and small. That matters. But Coppess worries about the farmer who wasn’t farming before 2005.
“They’ve not been through any of this stuff, and they’re the ones most at risk,” he argued, explaining that the Renewable Fuel Standard has created mostly favorable markets over that period.
Demand more
Many of you will remember John Otte from these pages, our retired but venerable and wise farm economics editor who grew up on a farm near Lena, Ill. He’ll tell you taxpayer-financed payments to farmers do not help farmers. And they’re a barrier to entry for beginning farmers. How?
Welfare payments make income reliable — think federal crop insurance. That gives farmers confidence to bid up the price of land.
“In both good times and bad, subsidies support land prices and cash rents higher than they otherwise would be. That ups the capital requirements for new players to get a foot in the door,” Otte explained.
Honestly, I’d like to see Otte in Washington. He could straighten a few folks out. Notice how little discussion we hear out of Washington about actual farm policy? Congress has neutered itself and the Senate and House ag committees are painfully quiet. The ag secretary can’t make her boss mad, or she’ll need a new job.
Neither Trump nor anyone else wants to acknowledge the mess farmers are in right now, as a direct result of poor federal farm policy that’s relied on an endless cycle of trade wars and bailouts. Meanwhile, they give lip service to tackling input monopolies.
Even the farm bill as we’ve known it is dead, piecemealed and rolled in with other legislation. We may never have another real farm bill debate.
Coppess has advocated a return to greater Conservation Reserve Program acres in 2026, to marginally reduce acreage and supply. Otte said the same thing, reminding us that CRP was crafted in the 1985 Farm Bill during the depths of the farm financial crisis.
We could pull other levers, like paying farmers to apply less fertilizer and making sure a bad yield doesn’t lower their actual production history for crop insurance.
We’re at a crucial point here. It’s too late for a big change in CRP in 2026. But it’s not too late to demand more of every ag committee member, of Congress, of the administration.
And that math problem? It’s really a leadership problem.
Comments? Email holly.spangler@farmprogress.com.