AFBF Analysis Underlines Need for Additional Farm Support
Faith Parum, Ph.D.
Economist
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
photo credit: AFBF Photo, Dylan Davidson
Faith Parum, Ph.D.
Economist
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
A new Market Intel illustrates that, despite recent assistance payments, the U.S. farm economy is still in trouble. Chad Smith has the story.
Smith: While some progress has been made in stabilizing the farm economy through the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program and Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, recent numbers show that farmers still need help. Faith Parum, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said farm losses continue to pile up.
Parum: Our farmers are really struggling right now. They've seen consecutive years of losses, and so even though we've had some economic assistance from Congress and the White House, we still see losses across the economy.
Smith: Parum says the economic pressures facing farmers and ranchers come from rising input costs coupled with commodity prices that just aren’t keeping up.
Parum: We've had historically low commodity prices, but what's really driving these losses are extremely high production expenses that have increased for the third year in a row. The recent USDA forecast says they're going to increase again in the upcoming crop year. This means that all nine of our principal row crops are going to continue to lose money per acre.
Smith: Parum says Congress must act now to ensure farmers and ranchers can make it to the fall, when certain legislative fixes kick in.
Parum: If Congress can really step in and help stabilize the farm economy and help us get to some of those safety net investments they made in the summer, those safety net investments through the One Big Beautiful Bill won't come into effect until October. So, we need to make sure we get our farmers to that point, and so they can step in, they can help provide some economic assistance to our row crop farmers, but also our specialty crop farmers who were left out of the recent package.
Smith: Learn more at fb.org/MarketIntel. Chad Smith, Washington.
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