Crop Production NAICS 111

Dec 23, 2025 - $12 Billion in Aid to Farmers

• Long-awaited assistance for America’s struggling farmers, delayed by the government shutdown, arrived in December, The New York Times reports. At a White House event with farmers, President Trump unveiled a $12 billion rescue package with most of the relief funds coming from the USDA’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program. According to the Agriculture Department, the money will go to producers of corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, wheat, and other row crops, with payments to farmers to be made by the end of February. The Trump administration will initially distribute $11 billion and is reserving another $1 billion to support growers of fruits and vegetables as needed, according to NYT. Still, the total payout to farmers could be far less than their recent losses caused by Trump’s tariffs and trade war with China, which caused China to retaliate by boycotting US farm products, most notably soybeans.
• Record‑high copper prices have triggered a surge in copper theft across the nation’s farms, causing major damage to irrigation systems, pumps, and electrical infrastructure, Farm Journal reports. Ground zero of copper theft arguably is central California’s Tulare County, often ranked as the US’s top ag-producing county. For crop producers, this crime wave leads to higher repair costs, unexpected downtime, and lost yield potential, especially when thieves target pivot wiring or pump stations during critical irrigation windows. A new farm security innovation, Cop‑R‑Lock, is designed to deter theft by physically securing copper components and providing constant monitoring. Dubbed the watchman that never sleeps, the new technology reduces the risk of irrigation outages, protecting crop health during heat or drought. Cop‑R‑Lock lowers maintenance and replacement costs, which have soared due to repeated theft incidents, and offers greater operational reliability, especially in remote fields where surveillance is difficult, according to Farm Journal.

• Leading indicators for the farm sector’s financial health all show elevated risk, according to the latest report from the Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center. The report tracks 14 financial indicators organized in four classes: Farmer and banker sentiment; Farm income and balance sheet health; Farm machinery market dynamics; and Credit quality. The risk rating (on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being low risk and 10 high risk) is 6.2. The farm machinery market showed the biggest signs of deterioration, with a risk rating of 5.7, while farm income and balance sheet health, and credit quality carry a risk rating of 5.8 each, and farmer and banker sentiment at 5.9. The forecast shows a decline in net cash income for the two crop farm business types: a 1% decline for specialty crops farm businesses and a 14.8% drop for corn farm businesses.
• Heat and extreme weather are driving short-term surges in food prices around the globe, The Wall Street Journal reports citing a study led by Spain’s Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Adverse weather conditions are driving up the price of staples including potatoes, rice, onions, lettuce, and fruit, per the BSC report. “Until we get to net-zero emissions, extreme weather will only get worse, but it’s already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world,” Maximillian Kotz, a research fellow at the BSC, told WSJ. In the US, vegetable prices in California and Arizona jumped 80% year over year in November 2022 after extreme drought, while in Ethiopia food prices rose 40% in March 2023 following a drought in 2022. Last year was the hottest year on record. With temperatures continuing to climb, weather conditions and further price shocks are to be expected, per the BSC report.