On December 20, 2024, the U.S. Congress approved the American Relief Act, 2025, that keeps the federal government funded through March 14, 2025; extends the 2018 Farm Bill until September 2025; and provides $10 billion in economic assistance for crop farmers. Congress mandated the Secretary of Agriculture to provide economic assistance payment(s) to crop producers within 90 days of the data of enactment of this Act. The economic assistance to each person or legal entity by commodity is calculated as the economic assistance per acre multiplied by the number of eligible acres in each crop.

The economic assistance per acre (Table 1) is determined as the highest of: (a) 26% of the economic loss in each eligible crop; and (b) a minimum payment rate equivalent to 8% of the product of the commodity-specific statutory reference price times the national average Price Loss Coverage (PLC) payment yield.

The economic loss from each crop is determined as the difference between the “2024 expected cost of production per acre” published by the USDA Economic Research Service and the “2024 expected gross return per acre”. The latter is obtained as the product of the projected...