ECAP payments helping struggling farmers a little bit

By Sean Ellis

Idaho Farm Bureau Federation

POCATELLO – Times are tough in farm country right now, with input costs remaining high while agricultural commodity prices are on the decrease.

USDA’s Emergency Commodity Assistance Program is providing a little bit of help to some farmers, as outlined in a May 7 USDA news release.

According to USDA, the ECAP program is providing one-time economic assistance payments that are designed to help agricultural producers “mitigate the impacts of increased input costs and falling commodity prices.”

ECAP, authorized by Congress in December, will issue up to $10 billion in direct payments to producers of eligible commodities.

Applications for the program opened March 19 and run through Aug. 15.

According to an article written by American Farm Bureau Federation Economist Betty Resnick, “The aid comes at a time of acute need in farm country, when a combination of low commodity prices, high input prices and an outdated and ineffective safety net left farmers deep in the red in 2024.”

Most crop prices hit near-record or record levels in 2022 but have taken a nosedive since. For example, farm-level corn and wheat prices have plummeted almost 40 percent since then.

However, the cost for the inputs that farmers need to produce their crops have remained high.

According to AFBF, the cost to produce an acre of corn has risen by about 30 percent compared with 2020. According to Resnick, many U.S. farmers are entering their third year of losses on every acre they plant.

Enter ECAP.

USDA announced May 7 that 487,177 U.S. farms had received a total of $7.3 billion in ECAP payments. There are about 1.9 million farms in the United States.

According to a portal USDA created to allow people to track payments, a total of $43.5 million had been distributed to 2,862 applicants in Idaho as of this week. There are 22,000-plus farms and ranches in Idaho.

Of that Idaho total, $23.6 million had gone to wheat growers, $7.4 million to barley farmers and $7 million to corn growers. The rest went to a variety of crops, including canola, oats, chickpeas, safflower, lentils, peas, mustard and sorghum.

Potatoes, Idaho’s top crop, is not one of the eligible ECAP crops.

That $43 million total for Idaho is a very small amount compared to the estimated $9 billion in total production expenses that Idaho farmers and ranchers had last year.

Teton farmer Dwight Little said many farmers are in a tight spot right now.

“Input costs have risen so drastically and (farm-level) commodity prices don’t cover what our expenses are any more,” he said. “Like any business, we can’t continue to operate under those type of circumstances.”

He said the assistance provided by the ECAP program won’t rescue most farms, but it does help.

“It’s not going to help stop the ship from sinking if the ship is already sinking … but it’s real money and it does help out,” he said. “We’re not expecting the government to pay our expenses by any means – I don’t think any producer is – but it does help a little.”

Hamer farmer Justin Place agrees and said while the ECAP payments aren’t big, they do help some.

“It doesn’t pay a lot, but the guys who are struggling, it’s going to help them quite a bit,” he said.

He said farm-level commodity prices are not in a great spot right now and it’s going to be another tough year for many farmers.

Resnick wrote that the ECAP program “will bring much-needed relief to farmers across the country, who are staring down their third year of negative returns on every acre they plant in a time of intense trade-related uncertainty.”

Consumers may wonder why retail food prices are on the rise while farmers are receiving less for their commodity.

The answer is simple: the middleman.

According to USDA, farmers on average receive 8 cents of every dollar spent in the U.S. for food at the retail level. The rest of the average retail food dollar goes for various costs such as transportation, processing, packing, advertising, etc.