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Farm policy expert warns ad hoc payments could destabilize ag markets

A farm policy specialist says the potential for ad hoc payments to become problematic is massive.  

Jonathan Coppess leads the Gardner Agricultural Policy Program at the University of Illinois.

“It’s just a lot of, really strange kind of, uncertainty,” he says.

He tells Brownfield farmer payments don’t solve market issues.

“If payments are working against the adjustments we need to see on fertilizer prices on seed prices, then farmers are being pushed really potentially over a cliff because we’re not seeing that adjustment that we need in the market, because these payments are sort of upending everything,” he explains.

Coppess says he’s also worried the USDA will use CCC funding that’s intended for first-quarter program payments, like marketing assistance loans, ARC and PLC, and conservation, to provide temporary financial relief.

He says soybeans are being used as a geopolitical pawn.

“Whether China has figured out that this is a way to try to force the Trump administration to back down on things, whatever it might be, it doesn’t make for a healthy, functioning market,” he says. “And it makes it really tough for farmers who have to plan going into the spring what they’re going to plant, what’s that market going to look like?”

Coppess says the payments will likely cause domino effects in other commodities, artificially inflating true market demand.

Brownfield interviewed Coppess during the Michigan Ag Credit Conference on Tuesday in East Lansing.