Is More Bridge Assistance Really Needed?

By Bart Fischer and Joe Outlaw

While farmers have been dealing with inflation in input costs since the onset of COVID-19, relatively high commodity prices (in large measure resulting from the war in Ukraine) helped blunt the pain through 2022. The perfect storm arrived as commodity prices started plummeting in 2023. Over the last 3 years—from 2023 to 2025—the losses have been piling up. As noted in Table 1, the average corn, soybean, and wheat producer has accumulated roughly $300 per acre in total losses over the last 3 years. For cotton producers, that estimate is roughly $1,000 per acre.  After all their crops have been sold and all their bills have been paid, that’s how far in the hole they remain. Thankfully, the federal government has stepped in at various times to help. But, this all begs the question of what the net result over the last 3 years has been. This is especially the case as calls continue to circulate on Capitol Hill about the need for additional bridge assistance.

As noted in Table 1, Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) provided little assistance for 2023 and 2024 largely because the reference prices had not been updated since the 2018 Farm Bill.  While ARC and PLC will deliver significantly more assistance for the 2025 crop year—owing to improvements in the One Big Beautiful Bill from last summer—that assistance is not slated to arrive until later this year (October 2026). Congress also stepped up in December 2024 and created the Emergency Commodity Assisstance Program (ECAP), providing $10 billion in assistance for economic losses incurred in the 2024 crop year. More recently, Secretary Rollins announced an additional $11 billion for row crop producers via the new Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) program for economic losses incurred in the 2025 crop year.

That is a tremendous amount of assistance. Is more really needed? While we will leave the question of “need” to policymakers to debate, we do offer the following observations. As reflected in Table 1 and Figure 1, despite all of the aid provided, we estimate that it is covering roughly 35% of the total loss for cotton and soybeans and roughly 45% of the loss for corn and wheat. In other words, farmers have had to shoulder roughly 55% to 65% of the loss on their own over the last 3 years. If nothing else, this should bring into focus the magnitude of the challenge they’ve been facing. Perhaps most daunting: they are facing a situation where the outlook suggests the losses will grow even larger next year.