SD Farmers Receive $138M in USDA Coronavirus Subsidy

Kristi Noem’s Freedomania isn’t keeping farmers afloat amidst coronavirus. Even those great rural pillars of self-sufficiency are getting $138 million in federal coronavirus assistance:

More than 11,000 ag producers in the state have received funds from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program since it began several weeks ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More than 6,000 South Dakota producers have received $95.7 million to compensate for livestock losses due to the pandemic, and 5,200 producers have received $36.3 million to compensate for non-specialty crop losses, including corn and soybeans, due to the pandemic, according to the USDA [Lisa Kaczke, “SD Ag Producers Receive $138M for Losses Due to Coronavirus,” Aberdeen American News, 2020.06.17].

Wait a minute: we know about coronavirus kinking the meat supply chain, but corn and soybeans? They weren’t even in the ground when the pandemic hit, and farmers have been out planting like crazy in our fine spring weather. But after two years of hits from tariffs (which are still there and not working), the USDA figures coronavirus will drop commodity crop prices another 12% to 18%:

Traditional farm subsidies have been overshadowed by the Trump administration’s use of stopgap payments totaling $23 billion to farmers and ranchers to mitigate the impact of the trade war on 2018 and 2019 production. The $2 trillion coronavirus relief package included money for agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said producers would get $16 billion in cash through one-time programs. Unofficial reports say row-crop farmers would get $3.9 billion.

“Deepening concern exists over the demand destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said the economists, so they compared corn and soybean futures prices before and after the coronavirus became widespread. The crops would have generated some $101 billion in revenue before the coronavirus. At present, the two most widely grown U.S. crops would fetch $83 billion to $88 billion [Chuck Abbott, “Multibillion-Dollar Corn and Soy Payments Possible Due to Coronavirus,” Successful Farming, 2020.05.07].

If Kristi Noem truly believed the slogans she’s reciting about keeping government out of our lives, she’d let freedom fry the farmers in the market. But she knows her kin and lots of other South Dakota farms and businesses can’t survive a free market roiled by Trump, coronavirus, and other pathogens and depend on government to keep them alive.