With the start of the new fiscal year, the USDA will issue $8 billion in crop subsidy payments, triggered by persistently low commodity prices, to hundreds of thousands of farmers. The government also said it will pay $1.6 billion in annual rental payments to landowners who enrolled fragile land in the Conservation Reserve.
The USDA said 500,000 growers would receive payments through the insurance-like Agriculture Risk Coverage subsidy and 250,000 farmers would get a check through the traditionally structured Price Loss Coverage subsidy. Some producers will receive payments under both programs, which apply to major crops such as corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, peanuts and canola. Additional payments are possible for crops such as rice in coming months as USDA calculates average prices for the crops. Marketing years start and end on different dates for various crops. The wheat marketing year runs from June 1-May 31, for instance, while it is Sept. 1-Aug. 31 for corn and soybeans.
The Conservation Reserve pays landowners to idle highly erodible or environmentally fragile land for 10 years or longer. Enrollment is capped at 24 million acres.
Corn farmers will receive around $3 billion and wheat growers would get $2 billion of the crop subsidies, according to a CBO estimate.