Administration Providing Economic Assistance Payments to Struggling Farmers

Dec 16, 2025

By Joe Outlaw and Bart L. Fischer et.al

President Trump and USDA Secretary Rollins announced the creation of the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program, a new round of economic assistance totaling $12 billion for the 2025 crop, with $11 billion for row crop farmers. While details such as individual commodity payment rates have not been made available, it was announced that the structure of FBA would be similar to the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP) that producers received earlier this year due to low commodity prices received for the 2024 crop. Recall the ECAP program provided assistance based on a producer’s planted acres of eligible commodities and 50% of acres that were prevented from being planted. According to USDA, acres that were prevented from being planted will not be eligible for FBA.

Individual payment rates are expected to be announced the week of December 22^nd. Payments are expected to be released by February 28, 2026. It was announced that payment limits would be different from ECAP. Payment limits will be $155,000 per person or legal entity, and the AGI limits will be $900,000. In ECAP, producers could double their limit if 75% of their AGI was from farming. The new assistance does not have this provision.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators