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FAPRI report shows OBBB helps farmers
Analysis by the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute shows producers will benefit from farm policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Pat Westhoff tells Brownfield the One Big Beautiful Bill Act does provide more payments to producers than the extended 2018 farm bill would have provided. “Pretty much every commodity sees increases in ARC and PLC payments so that’s obviously a benefit to a wide range of producers. On the other hand, the increases, while they’re very important, don’t change the fundamental story that income levels are expected to be much lower in the future than they were at the peak in 2021 and 2022.
For crop insurance, Westhoff says under the OBBB, producers will receive higher-of calculated PLC or ARC payment for each crop, regardless of which program they elected before the OBBB was approved. “It’s true for the 2025 crop so it’s for this one-year only. You don’t have to go back and redo your election to take in account of the new provisions. Starting in 2026, we’ll be back to the old routine of every year where you’ll have to sign up for one of the programs or the other.”
Westhoff says the OBBB Act did allow for more base acres but, “The provision is a little bit murky, so we’re still waiting to see just exactly how USDA will choose to interpret some of it, but at least given the interpretation that we assumed, it gets significant increases in base acreage for all of the major program crops.”
A link to the new report can be found online here.
AUDIO: Dr. Pat Westoff discusses the new FAPRI report on the impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with Brownfield’s Larry Lee