This Policy Report column was first published by Nebraska Farmer on Jan. 9, 2025, and is excerpted here with permission.
On Dec. 21, Congress passed and the president signed a funding package just as the lights of government were due to go out before Christmas. The American Relief Act 2025 provides continuing appropriations for government programs and operations at existing levels through mid-March before another vote will be needed to fund the remainder of the fiscal year.
The act also included substantial disaster relief funding and another one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. Agricultural groups were particularly attentive to the ag disaster funding and the farm bill provisions in the final bill. Although some of the farm program provisions and other policy issues were fodder for debate earlier that week, stalling a final agreement, the act eventually passed with $31 billion in assistance for agriculture among more than $100 billion in total emergency relief for ag and for disasters nationwide.
Looking at the assistance and at the farm bill language can help producers and agricultural stakeholders analyze the current outlook for ag and the questions that remain for the road ahead.
Agricultural disaster assistance
The legislation includes $21 billion in ag disaster relief to address ag losses nationwide that occurred in 2023 and 2024. While hurricane damage and losses made most headlines in the past several months and account for much of the total ag and other relief in the act, the ag assistance covers a full range of ag losses due to disaster events. The legislation only provides limited instructions to the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) to carry out assistance for 2023 and 2024 with reference to provisions for 2021 and 2022, suggesting FSA’s existing Emergency Relief Program (ERP) as the likely vehicle.
ERP assistance included a round of assistance payments to crop producers to cover losses above and beyond what crop insurance covered as well as a lower level of assistance to producers who did not purchase crop insurance or sign up for the Noninsured Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) on all of their crops. The ERP assistance also included livestock assistance beyond that already provided in standing disaster assistance programs for livestock producers, and $2 billion is specifically set aside in the current act for such assistance again. There are other specific provisions, including $220 million in block grants to small agricultural states to help, as determined appropriate locally.
It is difficult to assess how much the assistance might add up to for Nebraska producers. In previous rounds of ERP assistance, Nebraska received over $500 million for the 2020-2022 period out of a total of $11 billion nationally. This time, there is $21 billion committed for assistance, but Nebraska losses for 2023 and 2024 likely compare differently with losses nationwide, particularly in relation to massive hurricane losses reported in the Southeast. In the end, Nebraska might see a few hundred million dollars in ag disaster assistance, but perhaps not as much as it will see in the economic relief package and certainly not as fast given the time that will be needed for the FSA to develop rules and sign-up procedures.