Trade bailout data and USDA farm income forecast could inform local stories about upcoming planting season

Politico map; click the image to enlarge it.

Farmers received the last tranche of trade bailout payments last week, which makes this a good time to do a local story on the coming crop season, including what local farmers plan to plant and why. Here are some new resources that could help:

Politico has created a map showing roughly how much aid each state released. "Iowa and Illinois (read: the biggest soybean-growing states) have each received more than $1 billion in total payments to producers, according to USDA data. Other top recipients include Kansas, Minnesota and Texas," Ryan McCrimmon reports.

Agricultural economists at the University of Illinois released two papers (here and here) with a wealth of data about how 2018 and 2019 trade bailout affected each county in the nation, including average payment per acre and comparisons of 2018 to 2019 payments per acre.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has released the first Farm Income Forecast for 2020. The forecast is usually released in February, August and November, and covers a wide range of data and predictions concerning the farm economy. Net cash farm income is predicted to decrease $10.9 billion, or 9 percent, to $109.6 billion "due to rising expenses, lower government payments and ultralow prices for corn and soybeans, the nation’s biggest crops," Adam Belz reports for the StarTribune in Minnesota. "That decline will happen even though farm revenue is projected to rise 2.7%."

The small increase in cash receipts "is expected to be eclipsed by the drop in government payments, because we’re looking at a drop in government payments for the sector as a whole of almost $9 billion," USDA economist Carrie Litkowski told Belz. "On top of that, we’re forecasting an increase in cash expenses."