Arkansas net farm income projected to decrease for second straight year

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ net farm income is projected to decline for the second straight year, a fall cushioned slightly by lower input costs, the Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center said in its latest report.   

The center, working with agricultural economists from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said in its “Fall 2024 Arkansas Farm Income Outlook” that Arkansas’ 2024 net farm income is expected to drop by 10 percent from 2023 levels and reach $2.96 billion.   

Net farm income report for Arkansas, October 2024. (Image by RAFF)

 Arkansas' net farm income is expected to see a $1.06 billion drop from its 2022 record-high levels. The report also compares the projected 10 percent reduction in state net farm income to the projected 6.2 percent decline in the U.S. net farm income projected by Mizzou’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. 

“Fertilizer and pesticides and fuel oils are going to decline by 9 percent year over year,” said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the Division of Agriculture. “These markets are finally stabilizing. They're coming off these market shocks from COVID, the supply chain issues, the trucker strikes in Canada, and the Ukraine war is kind of baked into the market now.”  

The report said total production expenses are estimated to decline 5 percent in 2024, as fertilizer, feed and fuel expenses retreat. An additional 5 percent decrease in production expenses is forecasted for 2025. 

Unfortunately, “the decrease in fertilizer, pesticides, fuel oils, and feed expenses are offset by the increase in purchased livestock expenses, which amount to a rise of $1.34 billion in 2025,” Loy said.

Cash receipts 

Farm cash receipts represent the total revenue a farm receives from the sale of its agricultural products, government program payments, and private insurance payments.  

The report said that in 2024, total cash receipts for Arkansas would decline by 2 percent or $317 million. Livestock receipts increased 5 percent, or $361 million, while crop receipts tumbled 10 percent, or $580 million. 

Ironically, 2024’s near-record yields are contributing to lower commodity prices. 

Hunter Biram, extension economist for the Division of Agriculture, said that Arkansas had  

Nearly a million and a half acres of rice which is the highest since 2020. Yield is near the record set in 2021 at 7,600 pounds per acre.  

“The price is the lowest that we've seen since 2021 when it came in right under $14 a hundredweight,” he said. 

Corn, which has had the fewest number of Arkansas acres since 2015, is forecast to have a near-record high yield. However, “the price for corn is the lowest that we’ve seen in five years.” 

Cotton was in the same boat.  

“The acreage is the highest that we've had since 2011,” Biram said. “We've got a lot of cotton acres out there, despite having the lowest price since 2020 and it’s at a near-record yield.” 

Arkansas’s 3 million acres of soybeans are projected to have a record yield of 55 bushels an acre, Biram said. “The price for soybeans is the lowest that we've seen since 2019, which is similar to corn.” 

Livestock and poultry 

However, the low prices that bedevil row crop growers is helping the cattle and poultry industry, which relies on crushed soybean and corn for feed.  

Higher egg, broiler, and cattle prices support 5 percent higher total livestock receipts in 2024, the report said, adding that poultry receipts are projected to increase by $287 million, while cattle and hog receipts are also projected higher, by $97 million.   

Loy noted that “feed prices declining this year pretty significantly – 18 percent. 

“Cattle prices are up 6 percent year over year. Most of the uptick over the last few years is due to the severe drought in the western U.S., which led ranchers to reduce herds,” he said. However, with cheaper feed, cattle prices are “expected to decline again in 2025.” 

Government assistance

The report also shows the proportion of government assistance has shifted from primarily market-based programs such as Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage — known as ARC and PLC, to supplemental and ad hoc disaster assistance across this same period.

The Fall 2024 Farm Income Outlook is co-published by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and RaFF at the University of Missouri, which provides objective policy analysis and informs decision makers on issues affecting farm and rural finances. The center collaborates with a number of states to develop farm income projections with local expertise.  

“RaFF’s Farm Income Outlook for calendar years 2024 and 2025 is intended to inform policymakers, industry analysts, and agricultural practitioners about the expected profitability of the local agricultural sector and its main drivers. RaFF’s state-level projections complement and add granularity to national projections by the USDA and FAPRI-MU, providing valuable insights on local agricultural trends,” said RaFF Director Alejandro Plastina.   

The full report and data tables are online.  

 To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.  

USDA’s latest farm income estimate a tale of black swans, record yields, tenant farmers

By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

LITTLE ROCK — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest farm income forecast, showing a somewhat rosier picture than it forecast in February, is a tale of record yields, black swans and tenant farmers.

At left, Hunter Biram, at right, Ryan Loy, both extension economists with the U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.  The two chime in on the implications of the Sept. 5, 2024, farm income update from USDA. (U of A System Division of Agriculture image)

The report, released last Thursday, showed net farm income was expected to decline 4.4 percent, compared to the 22 percent USDA had forecast earlier in the year. The forecast is the result of a complex intertwining of factors including available stocks of commodities, predicted yields and “black swan” events such as the COVID pandemic and persistent drought.

USDA said net farm income was forecast at $140 billion, down 4.4 percent from the previous year.

Broad strokes

The overall farm income report is influenced by expectations for the sales of livestock and poultry and plant commodities. Cash receipts from commodity sales were expected to decrease by $9.8 billion, from $526.3 billion in 2023 to $516.5 billion in 2024.

“The expectations of animal receipts in February was much lower and that was putting downward pressure on everything else,” said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “But now, the USDA  thinks animal receipts are going to offset low crop receipts.”

USDA put the value of production of livestock at $19 billion and the value of crop production at minus $25.6 billion.

Loy said “On the crop receipt side of things — driven mostly by corn and soybeans, because they have the most acreage overall — corn is going to be down about $16 billion. Soybean is going to be down about $8.6 billion.

“What they’re predicting is just the crop receipts alone is going to be down about 10 percent to about $249 billion,” he said.

Record yields

Corn and soybean stocks from the previous growing year were high, and 2024 looks like another high-yield year. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service was forecasting record corn and soybean yields for the United States, including Arkansas.

Slide from USDA presentation on farm income. ((mage courtesy USDA)

Following supply and demand, those high supplies mean “we don’t have any supply constraints on prices,” Loy said, a situation made worse by the lowering Mississippi River preventing shippers from moving full barges of commodities out to the Gulf of Mexico.

USDA also said the cost of crop production would decline by $4.4 billion, or 1 percent, due to lower costs of inputs such as fertilizer and fuel. Loy said the decline in production costs might have another cause: “They might be a function of leaner operations” that simply aren’t buying as many inputs as they have in previous years.

The forecast said farm sector assets would increase 5.2 percent while debt would increase 4.2 percent.

Farm equity is also a factor in how net farm income is calculated. USDA is forecasting a brighter picture with farm equity increasing 5.3 percent, although it’s unclear whether its equity forecast includes tenants that are non-farm owners — those who rent land to farm.

According to 2017 USDA figures, 6.7 percent of Arkansas farmers are tenants.

“The tenants are the ones who are really going to be impacted this year,” Loy said. “They don’t have as much of their equity in land. Land appreciates over time, whereas tenants typically have equity in depreciable assets, such as machinery.

“In a time where cash on hand is important, having equity in machinery versus land means you may only recover a portion of your debt obligation through sales of machinery,” Loy said.

Shifting from market-based to emergency-based

Government assistance to farmers was another significant shift under the report’s surface, said Hunter Biram, an extension economist with the Division of Agriculture. Biram is also associate director of the Southern Risk Management Education Center. This assistance is also included in the calculations for net farm income.

USDA said direct government payments were forecast to decline $1.8 billion, or 15.1 percent from 2023 to 2024.

There are several types of government assistance to agriculture: programs that provide a safety net from commodity market fluctuations, supplemental assistance in case of natural disaster, resource conservation incentive programs and ad hoc programs.

ARC, or Agriculture Risk Coverage, and PLC, or Price Loss Coverage, are market-based programs that financially protect farmers from substantial drops in crop prices or revenues. Both programs are legacies of the 2014 Farm Bill. Non-market-based assistance available to farmers includes ERP, or Emergency Relief Program, and ad hoc programs such as the Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program, Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and the Pandemic Market Volatility Assistance Program.

“What I find particularly interesting is that shift in proportion of assistance from majority ARC and PLC — market-based assistance — to majority supplemental assistance and ad hoc assistance,” he said.

“From 2015-18, the percentage of government assistance attributed to these market-based programs averaged about 48 percent,” Biram said. “Supplemental programs, that average was about 18 percent and conservation programs was about 31 percent.

“Now, if you look at 2019 through the 2024 report released on Sept. 5, the ARC-PLC percentage is 7 percent, the supplemental proportion is 69 percent, and conservation is 22 percent,” he said.

“The implication I see immediately is that the current market-based programs are potentially outdated,” he said. “They were written for the 2014 Farm Bill with no significant changes in the ’18 Farm Bill.”

Asked if the shift from market-based to ad-hoc was due to higher incidences of natural disasters or other events, Biram said, “it could possibly be from more frequent what people call ‘black swan’ events — these events that have very low probabilities of occurring like the pandemic, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“It could be that supplemental assistance is more feasible to roll out versus changing the existing commodity programs,” he said. “But it doesn’t diminish the fact that the commodity program has not provided adequate risk protection in recent years. I think there is an implication for an improved safety net. And while these are low-probability events, I don’t think they explain the difference in 48 percent versus 7 percent.”

ERP on its own is another factor in the improved forecast for net farm income, Biram said.

“Most of the government assistance for the years 2022-2024 are the Emergency Relief Program and conservation programs,” Biram said. “ERP assistance for the 2020-2021 crop years was delivered in two phases in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, another round of phase one payments are projected to be released due to a rule which limited ERP assistance to producers who received federal crop insurance indemnities.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.

La Ñina boosts the Panama Canal; Houthi threat drives up shipping costs through the Suez

By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture

LITTLE ROCK — While La Ñina is helping ease the traffic knots at the Panama Canal, repeated attacks by Houthis — some fatal — have driven shippers to find alternatives to the Suez Canal, said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

More than a quarter of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are exported through the Panama Canal, says Ryan Loy, extension economist. (U of A System Division of Agricultre photo)

The Panama Canal is a key route for global trade, including for Arkansas commodities such as soybeans and corn. In March, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that traffic through the Panama Canal had dropped 49 percent since 2021 and 42 percent in the Suez Canal during the same period.

“About 26 percent of U.S. soybeans and 17 percent of U.S. corn is transported via the Panama Canal,” Loy said. “And this is important to us, especially in Arkansas, because a lot of our grain goes down the Mississippi River to the Port of New Orleans.”

Arkansas’s export soybeans and corn go through the Panama Canal to get to Asia, Loy noted.

Long-term drought across Central America was strangling the Panama Canal. While the passage connects two oceans, the water used to raise and lower ships between the coasts comes from Gatun Lake, a fresh water body. Each ship transit requires 52 million gallons of water. The lake fell to its lowest levels in five years last June, hitting 79.5 feet.

“It was a very dire situation,” Loy said. The alternative to the canal would mean sailing around Cape Horn at the bottom of South America, costly in fuel and fraught with dangerous weather.

Lower lake levels meant shallower water in the locks. The Panama Canal Authority ended up restricting the number of ships making transits. Ships that could make the trip had to carry less cargo to prevent their hulls from hitting bottom.

However, the return of La Ñina has meant replenishing rain for the lake and the canal authority has not only increased the number of ships allowed through, but also allowed heavier ships that sit more deeply in the water.

As of July 11, the canal authority was “increasing the number to 33 ships a day. Then on July 22, they’re going to allow 34 ships a day and on Aug. 5, they will open up one more spot for the Neopanamax ships.”

“Neopanamax” refers to the largest ships than can pass through the canal’s newest locks, which opened in 2016. These vessels can be up to 1,202 feet long, 168 feet wide and have a draft of 50 feet. Draft is the distance between the ship’s waterline and its lowest point.

“This is very close to what they used to do —  38 ships a day — so we’re getting close to normal,” Loy said.  “Just for comparison, in November 2023, they were at 24 ships a day, so you can see how much we’ve kind of improved since then.”

Should drought return the canal to its restricted state and if China’s soybean crop is poor, “that leaves Brazil an opportunity,” he said.

Brazil is a key rival to the U.S. for soybean trade and doesn’t rely on the Panama Canal.

“Brazil can come in and say, we don’t need the Panama Canal. We can transport our grain via rail and trucks to the Pacific. They have a lot of it and it’s much cheaper,” Loy said. “So those are the kind of implications of what could happen if the drought comes back.”

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is a critical route, carrying an estimated 12-15 percent of global trade.

The Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired these images of the Suez Canal’s mid-section, showing the canal after expansion was completed in 2016. (Image courtesy NASA).

Since starting in November 2023, Houthi attacks in the Suez Canal have become fiercer, resulting in the deaths of four crewmembers from attacks on two ships, the MV True Confidence and the Tutor.

MarineTraffic.com, which tracks global shipping, reported a 79.6 percent reduction in dry bulk carriers — whose shipments include grain — passing through the Suez, just 24 ships in June, compared to 118 in June 2023. The amount of cargo passing through the canal in May was 44.9 million tons, down from 142.9 million tons in May 2023.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said many shippers were opting to avoid the canal and the Houthis, including British Petroleum, Evergreen, CMA CGM, Hapag Loyd and Maersk.

Maersk resumed its use of the canal in June, since taking the the Cape of Good Hope route around the tip of South Africa added an estimated $1 million in fuel costs and one to two weeks in additional transit time, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Rounding the cape is still perilous, with one ship running aground and another losing cargo, according to Bloomberg.

The Suez Canal’s decreased traffic meant the port authority’s yearly revenues were nearly halved, from $648 million last year to $337 million, Loy said.

“The areas surrounding this are also impacted, too, because people's jobs, people's livelihoods depend on traffic through the Suez Canal,” he said, and “that’s tough for that region.”

Houthis are only attacking ships affiliated with the U.S., Israel and their allies, affecting insurance premiums for the carriers.

“The total premium for U.S.-based cargo is 1.7 percent of total freight on board,” Loy said. “Because they’re not attacking Chinese ships, the Chinese premium is just 0.2 percent of the value of total freight on board.”

Where does this leave consumers?

“I'm surprised that we haven't seen much increase in items at the grocery store, even vehicles, or whatever it may be, anything besides grain, that are separate from our inflation issues,” Loy said. “The expected big ripple effect is having a little bit less of an impact than most people thought.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagra.m.at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. 

Fact sheet offers risk analysis for poultry contract growers

By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Last year’s closure of chicken processing plants in North Little Rock and Van Buren sparked a few questions in economist Jada Thompson’s mind.

“One of the questions was about what kind of risk was associated with lending and the risks involved for new producers,” said Thompson, an assistant professor for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture who specializes in the economics of poultry. 

The poultry industry is vertically integrated, which means poultry companies contract with growers and supply those growers with birds and feed. The growers supply the rest, including barns, electricity, water and labor. The industry is a big deal in Arkansas, which produced 7.35 billion pounds of broilers in 2022, ranking it third in the U.S. broiler production. The critical step between farm and consumer is the processing plant.

The recent closure of two Arkansas processing plants sparked a few questions in poultry economist Jada Thompson's mind. (U of A Sytem Division of Agriuclture file photo).

Thompson said that risk is part of any enterprise and in the case of the plant closures, growers had to figure out what to do with the houses they have to raise birds. Some growers had their contracts switched to a nearby plant with the same integrators, while others’ contracts were bought out and had scramble to find places to contract to process their poultry to ensure continued cash flow.

“In the unfortunate circumstances there isn’t another plant or integrator within a drivable distance, and assuming no alternative use of poultry growing complexes, the growers have no incoming revenues to pay debt obligations,” she said.

All of this led Thompson to invite grad student Kylie Roseler, to analyze the risks. Shelby Rider, a program associate brought Geographic Information System skills and fellow assistant professor Ryan Loy who brought his farm business management knowledge.

The result of this collaboration is the fact sheet Location, Location, Location: Mapping the Risks for Arkansas Broiler Production, which evaluates the risks for poultry producers and lenders by quantifying low, average, medium or high-risk areas. Among the factors the authors identified in determining risk level was the local cost of electricity, the location of feed mills, tax liabilities and the proximity of processing plants.

For example, their research showed that low-risk areas typically have more than four processing plants in their radius and in the lowest 50 percent for electric rates, whereas high-risk zones typically have only one processing plant and typically are in the top 50 percent of electric rates.

Using these factors, the team developed a map showing areas of highest risk, being in Jefferson County, which has only one integrator, and lowest risk, in northwest Arkansas, where there is a high concentration of integrators.

And while “this map may reinforce the idea of increased processing plant concentration in the poultry industry, where financial risks are lower. However, poultry is a living industry susceptible to biological hazards such as Avian Influenza, Newcastle, or Marek’s disease. These diseases spread rapidly when houses are in close proximity.”

The fact sheet concludes that “having high risk doesn’t mean that a location isn’t a worthy investment, just that there are obstacles a grower could face. Overall, this risk map aims to provide information so that informed decisions can be made.”

Meant for producers and lenders
“This fact sheet is going to be extremely helpful to chicken farmers,” Loy said. “If you're looking to get into the industry, you can use this fact sheet and say, ‘here are the riskiest areas of production in terms of the cost of electricity and the number of processors that are within some reasonable distance of you. You can look at the fact sheet and say, where are the least risky areas to poultry farm?

“On the lending side, the less risky you are, the more attractive you are to a lender,” he said. “A lender can see the location, evaluate the risk and that can come into play when it comes to securing credit.”

Takeaways
Roesler, who graduates May 2025 with a joint degree from the University of Arkansas and Ghent University in agricultural economics and rural development, said she became involved by “shifting from a scientific perspective of agriculture to the economic side.

“During my undergraduate studies in poultry science, I started to understand the growing importance of food security,” Roesler said. “However, through internships working on a farm and in a lab, I found my niche skills and how I can contribute to improving food security is through economic means.”

She said the most surprising thing about this project was “how the interests of individual producers might not align with the overall stability of the industry.”

As noted in the conclusion, “the consolidation of the industry is advantageous for a farmer’s contract security but poses a biosecurity risk,” Roesler said. “This observation was particularly significant for me, given that my thesis examines these disease risks in the context of international trade.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.

Effects of government shutdown would ripple through agriculture to consumers

By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture

LITTLE ROCK — A  government shutdown could remove price and revenue safety nets for farmers and mean higher food prices for consumers, said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Funding for the federal government runs out Sept. 30 unless Congress passes a continuing resolution or finds some other means to keep funds flowing. If the government shuts down, so too would progress toward the next Farm Bill. The Farm Bill has provisions with two sets of expiration dates: Sept. 30, and Dec. 31.

Economist Ryan Loy provides insights into the effects on agriculture of a federal government shutdown. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo)

“When a government shutdown happens, non-essential activity just goes out the window,” Loy said. “If there’s a shutdown, then that includes the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Rural Development Centers.

“If you’re a farmer trying to sign up for programs, those agencies are not going to hold sign-ups,” he said.

Another effect is that two key agencies, Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Agricultural Statistics Service, will also be closed and won’t be collecting statistics. That spells trouble in several ways. Without updated information from the BLS, the Federal Reserve can’t take informed action.

If NASS isn’t “going to do acreage reporting, that means they’re not going to give you payments, because nobody's going to be there to work,” Loy said. The shutdown would halt funding for  Agriculture Risk and Price Loss Coverage programs, known as ARC and PLC. These programs provide protection to farmers in the event of substantial revenue or commodity price drops. No funding means no payments to farmers.

SNAP, Crop insurance protected
If the government shuts down, participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and those who have crop insurance, won’t be affected. SNAP includes WIC, the Women, Infants and Children program.

“SNAP was authorized under the 2008 Food and Nutrition Act so lack of a Farm Bill won’t affect it,” Loy said, “Crop insurance was subsidized through the Federal Crop Insurance Act, so the crop insurance folks are going to be OK.”

Back to 1938 and 1949
Should the Farm Bill not go forward, farm commodity programs would lapse back to what’s referred to as “permanent law,” comprised of provisions from the 1938 and 1949 farm bills that never expire. Farm Bills passed since then have language that suspends the outdated provisions.

According to the Congressional Research Service, “permanent law would support dairy, wheat, rice, cotton, and corn but would not support soybeans, peanuts, and sugar, among other commodities. If the permanent law suspension were to expire, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would be required to implement permanent law, which is likely more expensive to the government and consumers than the current farm bill.”

“The big commodities that it will affect are cotton, milk and wheat,” Loy said, “So food prices will skyrocket in stores.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.

PARP offers opportunity for additional relief to underserved farms with pandemic-related losses

By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture  

LITTLE ROCK — Underserved farmers who suffered pandemic-related losses have until July 14 to apply for funds from the Pandemic Assistance Relief Program, or PARP.

PARP was created to expand the existing pandemic relief programs and to target overall revenue loss rather than just price losses, said Ryan Loy, extension economist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Extension agronomist Ryan Loy says there's a limit to the time to apply and the amount of funding available through PARP. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Kerry Rodtnick)

PARP is a lesser-known program that follows on the heels of other pandemic-relief programs including the Coronavirus Food Assistance Programs, known as CFAP 1 and 2, the Pandemic Livestock Indemnity Program Spot Market Hog Pandemic, and the 2020 Emergency Relief Program. The program is part of the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2021.

“It’s mainly the fact that the federal government had leftover funds,” Loy said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture “said ‘Let’s try to reach producers that we weren’t able to reach before with CFAP and ERP and programs along those lines’.

“The goal with PARP is to actually focus on underserved producers,” he said. “There’s kind of a laundry list of eligibility. I would suggest to any producer who is interested, to either go to farmers.gov — it’s right there on the front page — or call your local Farm Service Agency office. If you come to the FSA office with your 2016-2020 tax returns, they’ll basically do it all for you.”

Who’s eligible?

Loy said eligibility extends to any producer or entity that participated in agricultural production during the 2020 calendar year.

“PARP is also written to include cattle feeder operations that were previously denied assistance under CFAP 1 and 2,” Loy said. “The producer must have suffered at least a 15 percent decrease in allowable gross revenue for 2020 as compared to either 2018 or 2019 calendar year.

Deadline approaching

The clock is ticking both on the time and funding available, Loy said.

“There are two weeks left, however, it’s first-come, first-served,” he said. “A producer is eligible for up to $125,000. That’s the most they’ll pay, but it is subject to available funds. So, let’s say you put in your application in January, there is a pretty good likelihood that you’ll get paid relatively sooner than someone who applies a little later.”

Taxable payment

“This is a direct payment. It’s not a loan, you don’t have to pay it back,” Loy said. “Something that is important to know is that this is taxable income because it is a direct payment to you.”

PARP targets whole-farm allowable gross revenue losses in 2020 compared to the producer’s allowable gross revenue in 2018 or 2019. A producer can choose to elect losses on either year as their benchmark or based on their expected gross revenue in 2020 if they did not farm in either 2018 or 2019.

Gross revenue is the aggregation of the value of a producer’s crops. The allowable gross revenue is based on the net farming loss or profit from Schedule F, minus any pandemic-related aid already received by the producer.

For more information, please visit farmers.gov or contact your local FSA office.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.du/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.