USDA Resuming FSA Operations, Commodity Program Payments

Bloomberg’s Skylar Woodhouse reported that “Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said President Donald Trump’s administration will resume distributing $3 billion in aid from the Farm Service Agency that had been halted as a result of the three-week-long government shutdown.”

“‘President Trump will not let the radical left Democrat shutdown impact critical USDA services while harvest is underway across the country,’ Rollins said in a social media post Tuesday. ‘Thursday, USDA will resume Farm Service Agency core operations, including critical services for farm loan processing,'” Woodhouse reported. “Rollins also said that agriculture risk coverage and price loss coverage payments — financial guarantees for farmers to protect against fluctuations in crop prices — and other programs would resume operating.”

While Democrats play politics, @POTUS is standing up for our farmers.

This Thursday, @USDA will resume Farm Service Agency core operations, including critical services for farm loan processing, ARC/PLC payments, and other programs — over $3Billion in assistance farmers have… pic.twitter.com/oUy79obQ0e

— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) October 21, 2025

Agri-Pulse’s Philip Brasher reported that “the payments under the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage payments are for farmers signed up for the programs in 2024. ARC and PLC payments are made in the October of the following year. About $1.9 billion in ARC payments and $589 million in PLC payments were expected to be made this year, according to The University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.”

“ARC payments are triggered when county revenue falls below the average for the previous five years. PLC payments are made when the average market price for a commodity is below its reference price,” Brasher reported. “Rollins didn’t provide any more detail in her post, and neither did the department in a response to a query from Agri-Pulse.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Natalie Andrews and Patrick Thomas reported that “the reopened (FSA) county offices will be staffed by two office employees, five days a week, the officials said. The workers will be paid by carry-over balances and administrative funding, one of the officials said.”

“During a government shutdown, all personnel deemed nonessential are instructed to stop work. Negotiations over ending the shutdown, which started at the beginning of the month, are at a stalemate,” Andrews and Thomas reported. “The more than $3 billion in aid comes from money in the Commodity Credit Corp., which was created in 1933 to stabilize farm incomes and permits the borrowing of billions of dollars from the Treasury to finance its activities.”

Farm Bailout Announcement Remains on Hold

Politico’s Grace Yarrow reported earlier in October that “the Trump administration has pushed back its plans to roll out economic aid for farmers this week due to the government shutdown, according to four people familiar with the talks.”

“The Office of Management and Budget has readied between $12 billion and $13 billion to be allocated from an internal USDA account, some of which could be used to fund the bailouts for farmers hurt by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other economic headwinds, according to the four people with knowledge of the decision, all granted anonymity to share private details,” Yarrow reported. “No final decision has been made on just how much of the money will go toward farm aid, the people said, and the package won’t be coming out any time soon. The timeline has been further delayed because some USDA political appointees have been furloughed during the shutdown.”

“Officials have been weighing using tariff revenue, USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund and other alternative methods to alleviate farmers’ financial stress,” Yarrow reported. “There’s precedent: Trump tapped USDA’s internal fund to dole out $28 billion worth of bailouts during his first-term trade war with China.”