By Raynee Howell
Brent Rendel grabbed an ink pen, signed the back of the check he received from the Farmer Bridge Assistance program and took it straight to the bank to put the payment toward loans.
The third-generation family-farm owner from Miami, Oklahoma, said all the farmers he knows who received a check did the same.
The $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program, announced by the Trump administration in December, was a one-time payment to help farmers recover from high input costs and global trade disruptions, including the trade war with China, during the 2025 crop year.
The Farm Service Agency under the United States Department of Agriculture provided up to $155,000 to each producer. Rendel was one of the farmers who applied and received aid.
“Whenever you get an influx of cash like that, it really just replaces income that I was expecting,” Rendel said. “(It) was applied to the loans that were needed to cover the expenses or the lack of income. In that aspect, it helped me keep going. You’ll see some media reports of farmers getting six-figure incomes from government checks. Well, I can assure you, it’s not like we get these checks and are like ‘OK, let’s go to Tahiti.”
The assistance program helped farmers like Rendel stay afloat, but profits remained low as farmers continuously faced mounting financial pressures from trade disruptions with China, rising production costs, restrictive tariffs and instability from the Iran conflict.
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