In 2019, the farm belt felt about as hospitable as the asteroid belt. Record rainfall turned fields to sludge and made it nigh on impossible to plant corn and soybeans until long after the typical window had passed. President Trump’s long-running trade war cut off farmers’ access to China’s enormous market. Across the farm sector, commodity prices remained in the doldrums.
[After a biblical spring, this is the week that could break the Corn Belt]
Yet the Agriculture Department now estimates 2019 was farmers’ most profitable in five years. What happened?
Three words: Market Facilitation Program. Or, as it’s more commonly known, the farm bailout.
Without government assistance, U.S. farm income would have fallen about $5 billion from its already-low 2018 level. So the $14.5 billion in bailout funding announced so far represents a substantial reversal of fortune. About three-quarters of the funding already has been distributed.
