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Texas A&M looks at whether more farmer support is needed

The co-director of Texas A&M’s Ag and Food Policy Center has been taking a closer look at whether U.S. farmers need additional bridge assistance.

Bart Fischer tells Brownfield “I’ll let the policymakers answer that, but if your answer is that growers have to shoulder 55 to 65 percent of the loss, and by the way, try to cash flow this upcoming year, where it’s going to compound the problem even more, at some point, it doesn’t compute.”

The USDA recently announced $12 billion for a Farmer Bridge Assistance Program, with payments expected at the end of the month, but several ag groups have said it’s not enough.

Fischer says there’s some farmer aid fatigue in Congress, but farmers haven’t been made whole from it, despite what some might think.

Recent research from Texas A&M University shows farmers facing rising production costs with smaller safety net increases, which causes financial strain. Fischer says there’s only so many ways to navigate that.

“We’ve watched a lot of equity go out the window as the losses have piled up. Whatever cash that they had on hand has been used to compesate. To the extent that runs dry, they’re going to the bank and having to borrow their way through it. And by the way, they’ve been borrowing at significantly elevated rates, which just compounds the problem even more.”

Fischer says passing a farm bill on time could have helped the financial strain, but it wouldn’t have completely solved the problem.

He says lawmakers are contemplating how to proceed with more farmer aid and currently, there are two paths forward.

“One of them is a farm bill path and one of them is not,” he says. “The House is talking about marking up their farm bill and whether that bill could be a vehicle for making more improvements. Absent that, there are others who have been talking about additional bridge asssistance that would piggy back off what the department has announced.”

He says that would be done in a supplemental appropriations process.

Long-term, Fischer says market improvements would reduce future reliance on farmer aid, but until then, farmers are still shouldering losses and Congress has yet to decide how to fill the gap.