Many Midwest farmers have mixed feelings about upcoming USDA payments
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture will be sending $11 billion to farmers by the end of the month. However, some growers have said the money won’t be enough to make them whole.
The payments are part of the USDA’s $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which aims to help farmers cover part of the losses they incurred in 2025. Specialty crop producers will receive the remaining $1 billion, though details on those payments have not yet been released.
A month ago, the USDA announced its crop payment-per-acre rate, which favors commodities such as rice and cotton. Those crops had fewer planted acres but were more vulnerable to disease and weather events last year.
Disappointed soybean growers
Crops such as soybeans, corn and wheat will get compensated at lower levels because they’re projected to have a smaller average loss per acre nationwide. That’s despite lots of trade tumult that soybean growers, in particular, have experienced in recent months.
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“As far as looking at what soybeans ended up getting out of it, it was not nearly enough,” said Darin Johnson, President of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association.
Soybean prices were hit particularly hard last year as the U.S. entered a trade war with China, which typically buys half of all exported American soybeans. The Trump Administration imposed steep tariffs on China, which retaliated by boycotting soybeans altogether.
The two nations have since reached an agreement under which China has bought 12 million metric tons of soybeans this year and has committed to buying 25 million metric tons over the following three years.
But while the trade war between the two nations has seemingly simmered, American farmers’ pocketbooks were caught up in the trade spat as collateral damage.
“When trade wars happen, unfortunately, farmers bear a lot of that load,” Johnson said. “Just because a lot of our exports are commodities.”
Upper Midwest soybean producers are more reliant on China for sales because the states typically ship the beans by rail to Pacific Northwest ports for export to China, making them more vulnerable to price shocks from trade disputes.
Matthew Gammans, an ag economist with North Dakota State University, said that even though those areas may have been more disproportionately affected by trade disputes with China, they’ll receive the same payment rate as everyone else.
“So the losses for North Dakota soybean farmers can be really large,” Gammans said. “But they still get the same payment as the soybean farmer in Georgia or Iowa or anywhere else in the country.”
The payments themselves aren’t intended to fully cover farmers’ losses, Gammans added. They’re meant to help farmers hold out long enough to receive payments through programs that received a boost in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that’s expected this Fall.
“A lot of farmers have cash flow issues over the winter,” Gammans said. “They need to pay off loans, they need to buy inputs for the upcoming year. So a payment that is dispersed next fall is not as useful as a payment right now.”
While the payments could help farmers cover costs now, some producers worry that the White House is becoming too comfortable with issuing payments rather than opening new markets.
“This isn’t fun anymore.”
Growing up a teenager in the 2010s in Carrington, N.D., Caylor Rosenau knew farming would be hard work. He saw his parents and grandparents break a sweat and see their yearly profits fluctuate. But still, he felt it was a viable way to live.
“I graduated high school, and I looked at it, and I'm like, ‘Wow, we're making money,’” Rosenau said. “We're having a good time farming. It's very profitable.”
He became a full-time farmer in 2016, when prices were low but stable. Then, in 2018, the U.S. entered a trade war with China, which caused Rosenau to hemorrhage money.
“It was just like, ‘Wow, this, this isn't fun anymore,’” Rosenau said.
A year later, the government sent out one-time payments to help cover some of the losses farmers incurred. Then another check came the following year, and it continued all the way until the first Trump administration ended.
Now, Rosenau expects another payment from the second Trump Administration to arrive this month. Once the check comes in, it’ll go straight to his loans, and even then, it’ll cover only his accrued interest and very little of his actual principal.
He worries that once more, one-time payments could become commonplace.
“How many years can we keep doing this?” Rosenau asked. “How many years are we going to have the social capital of the American taxpayer to keep bailing out the American farmer?”
