Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced details on how the Trump Administration will dole out $10 billion of “emergency” farm income subsidies Congress attached to the three-month Continuing Resolution adopted last December.

Under the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), agricultural businesses that planted, or at least attempted to plant, certain crops in 2024 will receive “market relief” payments ostensibly to offset increased costs for inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds. This pot of funds is separate from the $20.8 billion in disaster assistance Congress authorized to cover losses from natural disasters in calendar years 2023 and 2024. An announcement on how those funds are to be distributed is expected later this month. The funds constituting ECAP payments were added at the last minute after the House and Senate Agriculture Committees failed to authorize a new five-year farm bill.

Eligible crops are limited to those that were specified in the legislation and include what Congress defines, and subsidizes, as “commodities” in the Farm Bill. These include corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans, and 14 other bulk grains, pulses, or oilseeds. Farm businesses will receive a payment based on the number of acres planted to one of these commodities, or acres that were prevented from planting due to weather. The per-acre calculation ranges from $16.02 for peas to as high as $84.74 for cotton. One estimate projects corn, cotton, wheat, and soybean producers will receive nearly 90 percent ($8.9 billion) of the $10 billion pot.

USDA is seemingly doing all it can to both maximize payments and spread the wealth to these favored farm businesses. USDA is actually mailing pre-filled applications to eligible businesses for whom they have information because the businesses are currently enrolled in other farm subsidy programs. Operations that don’t want to wait can apply online, mail their own applications, or visit any USDA service center to do so in person starting March 19. Also any business that has not already filed an acreage or prevented planting report with USDA has until August 15 to do so in order to receive payments under this “emergency” program.

Notably USDA has chosen to expand payments for select farm businesses. ECAP payments can be as high as $125,000 per individual or legal entity if less than 75 percent of their income is from farming, ranching, and forestry activities. Individuals or legal entities that receive 75 percent or more of their income from farming have their potential payment doubled to $250,000.

This $125,00/$250,000 payment limit is only applied to ECAP. Any payments under ECAP do not count toward payment limits for Title 1 farm subsidy programs. Eligibility for ECAP does require individual/entities “be actively engaged in farming,” but does nothing to fix massive loopholes that some farm businesses have exploited to farm the federal Treasury through inclusion of numerous “farm managers” each with their own separate payment limit.

The $10 billion for ECAP is also likely just the initial foray into increasing agriculture’s financial dependence on federal subsidies. Details on how USDA will distribute the $20.8 billion in natural disaster assistance is expected to be released in the coming weeks.