MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration announced a $12 billion farmer bailout package today, created to soften the blow of diminished export markets due to the administration’s own chaotic trade policies. Like the first Trump administration’s farmer bailout, this aid package is a short-sighted and inadequate response to the much deeper, systemic problems in the agriculture economy.
Of the $12 billion, $11 billion will go to commodity crop producers, with only $1 billion held back for fruit and vegetable producers. The new aid package follows a formula similar to the first Trump administration’s controversial program to distribute the aid. Three separate Government Accountability Office reports found widespread problems with the first administration’s trade aid program, including favoring some crops over others, favoring the largest farms, and excluding large numbers of farmers — particularly those growing non-commodity crops and smaller scale farmers — from receiving aid.
“This new aid program does nothing to address rising costs for all farmers, nor does it reduce the farm economy’s vulnerability to trade fights that drive down prices paid to farmers,” says Ben Lilliston, Director of Rural Strategies and Climate Change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “The promise of increased exports to lift prices has been sold to farmers for decades, even as the number of farmers continues declining and farmland ownership consolidates. An aid package should be coupled with deeper investments in local and regional food systems and greater diversity in cropping systems.”
Most major U.S. agriculture commodities, such as soybeans, are vulnerable to export disruptions. The U.S. Farm Bill incentivizes farmers to grow commodity crops to enter a global marketplace, often for animal feed, biofuels, or processed food ingredients. Simultaneously, the U.S. has been importing more food that people actually eat, such as fruits and vegetables, and is now running an agricultural trade deficit. The Trump administration has slashed funding that supports local and regional food systems, and further disrupted production by conducting sweeping ICE raids on food and farm workers around the country.
“Congress’s inability to pass a Farm Bill and respond to higher input costs, the loss of export markets, and massive USDA staffing cuts creates more uncertainty for farmers,” says Lilliston. “If structural policy changes aren’t made, we may see another aid package as soon as next year, just as we saw during the first Trump administration.”
To learn more about the Trump administration’s farmer aid policies, read our article on the Market Facilitation Program, the first Trump administration’s poorly designed farmer aid program that was reinstated earlier this year.
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Based in Minneapolis with offices in Washington, D.C., and Berlin, Germany, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems. To learn more, visit www.iatp.org.
