This planting season, farmers say federal assistance is too little, too late ...Middle East

Mike Graves deferred payments to John Deere for the first time in a half century of farming in 2024.

A million dollars for a cotton picker, $800,000 for a combine and $400,000 for a tractor in recent years drove Graves, who grows cotton, soybeans and corn in Tippah County, to borrow money from Mississippi Land Bank, part of the nationwide Farm Credit System, a co-op that provides financial support for farmers.

But this year, as dim predictions for 2025 have farmers questioning whether a few bad years could tip into a crisis, borrowing money isn’t enough.

Graves said he doesn’t like to rely on federal subsidies, but without the $31 billion in emergency payments Congress approved to aid farmers in December, “wouldn’t any of us survive.”

“I hate that the government has to get in it, but I’m not going to turn down anything they offer, either,” Graves said.

Congress in December approved $31 billion in direct payments to help farmers nationwide cope with lackluster crop prices, high input costs and extreme weather. But some Mississippi farmers said the payments they received through the $10 billion Emergency Commodity Assistance Program were smaller and later than they expected. And it’s unclear when and how the remaining $21 billion in disaster assistance will be disbursed.

Rates the USDA announced in March were much less than initial estimates floated for the per-acre commodity payments – $200 for cotton, $100 for corn, $81 for rice and $50 for soybeans – all linked to an unsuccessful bill introduced by Mississippi Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly in October. Instead, farmers are receiving $85 per acre for cotton, $43 for corn, $77 for rice and $30 for soybeans.

While Kelly’s initial bill calculated payments at 60% of farmers’ losses, the version included in the budget bill lawmakers passed on Dec. 21 – the day a government shutdown would have begun had Congress not acted – figured those payments at 26% of those amounts.

Though the law directed the USDA to make the payments within 90 days of its enactment – by March 21 – some Mississippi farmers said they didn’t receive their money until late April. And unlike the commodity payments, the $21 billion for natural disasters has no deadline for the USDA to disburse it. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website, Mississippi has disbursed $118 million through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program. The USDA has not announced when or how the $21 billion will be distributed.

Will Maples, an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Mississippi State University Extension Service, said that while the state is “nowhere near” the conditions that led to the notorious farm failures of the 1980s, “the concern is, can we get there?”

“If we stay in this environment,” Maples said, “2025 is looking tough, and 2026 is another tough year. That’s when talk about ‘Can it get as bad as the 80s?’ will really pick up.” 

Maples encouraged farmers to look out for “price rallies” as the growing season progresses, and not to be afraid to sell early.

Still, some farmers say conditions are worse than they’ve seen in years, and that the timing of federal commodity payments – well into planting season – hasn’t helped.

Brian Camp, a Union County soybean farmer, said farmers had hoped to use that money to pay outstanding debts in time to purchase inputs like seed for this year’s planting season.

“What they sent us now, it won’t even pay our fuel,” Camp said.

Lauren Swann, who grows cotton and watermelons in Union County, said drought last summer in northeastern Mississippi made margins even tighter.

“The math just ain’t mathin’,” Swann said.

As farmers face uncertainty about potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariffs this growing season, some continue to grapple with the consequences of his first trade war, experts said.

On a podcast with Mississippi Today last week, State Economist Corey Miller said that Trump’s 2018 tariffs eroded markets for U.S. agricultural exports and could do so again. The U.S. lost some $20 billion in agricultural exports in Trump’s first term, Miller told WJTV earlier this year.

Maples said that while Brazil first surpassed the U.S. in 2013 to become the world’s largest exporter of soybeans, Trump’s 2018 tariffs – and China’s retaliation in kind – cemented the South American country’s dominance in the international soybean market. China, the world’s top importer of soybeans, which is Mississippi’s biggest crop by acreage, sources some 70% of its supply from Brazil.

For soybean growers, “a lot of what we’re dealing with now is kind of a holdover from the last 2018 trade war we had with China,” Maples said. 

The U.S. and China announced a tariff truce Monday, with both countries slashing tariffs for the next 90 days as they continue to negotiate.

Farmers described struggling to square Trump’s claims to be on farmers’ side with uncertainty about the potential for tariffs to further cut prices. In a March Truth Social Post, Trump urged farmers to “get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product” for domestic sale and “have fun!”

“We’re being told to go out there and have fun, and be patient,” Swann said. “But planting season doesn’t wait, so we can’t wait on help.”

Graves said he hopes Trump’s tariffs will ultimately lead to higher prices, as long as the measures “get everything straight before everybody goes broke on the farm.” 

“He said he’s going to take care of us,” Graves said. “But we’ll see, I guess.”

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