Louisiana Farm Bureau Working to Get Assistance as US Agriculture Faces $44 Billion Loss

By Andy Brown

Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation

I want to give you an update on all the work your leadership and staff are putting in on the row crop assistance asks you’ve likely been reading a lot about. While there is no definite news to share, only rumor, we have been very active in trying figure out the best path to getting commodities suffering unprofitable market conditions some support to make it into 2026. Most of that work thus far has culminated into the two studies, which we are using to advocate on your behalf. Dr. Michael Deliberto of LSU and Madison Plaisance on our team have been very diligent in trying to quantify the needs of row crop agriculture to help us make a legitimate ask. The total estimated losses for the U.S. for row crop agriculture for the 2025 crop year are over $40B. Feel free to read and share these studies as you see fit.

Most of the focus of this advocacy has been with the Trump Administration or the Executive Branch. With Congress being in such a standstill, and the reality of all the political capital spent in Congress last year to achieve the 2024 assistance (ECAP/SDRP), we believe Sec. Rollins and others in the Trump Cabinet are our best hope for timely assistance. As such, and because they have given multiple signals of desire and plans to help, we have not chosen to initiate any sort of Voter Voice campaign. We greatly appreciated your incredible efforts last year to achieve what we did in advocating thousands of message to Capitol Hill. But, this year is a different approach. However, we have shared these studies with our Congressional delegation and there may require congressional action to allow the Trump administration the authority and/or funds they need to actually deliver assistance. We have made Congress aware of that and will let you know if advocacy to Congress directly through any sort of campaign is needed. We always promote you advocating directly though. So if you want to call your congressman and tell him how things are in agriculture, please do so!

Ultimately, two pathways for assistance are the primary focus and my best guess on what will actually deliver any assistance (if any). First is the CCC fund under USDA. This is what President Trump/Sec. Perdue used in 2018/2019 for the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). Second, President Trump and Sec. Bessent (Treasury) have mentioned using “tariff revenue” to assist farmers. The two challenges we are trying to attack with these pathways are that the CCC doesn’t have enough funds to cover the needs; and the tariff revenue presently doesn’t appear it can be shifted to USDA in a timely fashion without changes to present law. Both of those things will likely be where Congress comes into play, so stay tuned.

While I don’t have any definite news to share today or an ask of you yet, I know how desperate many of our members are for some sign of hope. I didn’t want our lack of communication on the issue to allow you or any others to believe we aren’t working daily on that. President Fontenot is in D.C. as I write this working with AFBF to try and amplify this message even further. There was believe to be an initial announcement for some relief this week, but reports are that won’t occur until the government is back open. If these reports are true, I don’t believe the funds available will be enough for us to call this issue done and over with. It’d be a welcomed start, but there is still work to do. Please let us know if you have questions or need us to report on this to your parish or others in your area. Otherwise, we will continue working on this and many other issues you all are facing.

For those not in row crops – rest assured we are working your issues too. New world screwworm, sugarcane disaster programs, specialty crop assistance, labor issues, etc. etc. Feel free to call us on those too. Thanks for your leadership and we will let you know when something breaks or changes on this effort as we go.