Farm Support Services NAICS 1151, 1152

Nov 30, 2025 - Farmers Await Aid

• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on November 19 told Bloomberg News the Trump administration intends to release its long-awaited plan to offer relief for farmers early in December. Administration officials said the announcement was delayed by the government shutdown, but now that the agencies’ funding has been restored, work on a proposal has moved forward. Rollins did not offer details of the relief plan but noted in her remarks that the row crop industry has been especially hard hit. Record harvests amid low prices for agricultural commodities and the loss of billions of dollars in soybean sales due to trade tensions with China have left many farmers in a precarious financial position. While China has resumed some soybean purchases it may not be enough to make US soybean farmers whole.
• 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.

• Cattle ranchers and feeders are on alert after animal health authorities confirmed another New World Screwworm (NWS) infection in a cow 70 miles south of the US-Mexico border in September, Beef Magazine reports. The NWS is a parasitic fly that lays eggs in the living tissue of fresh wounds in warm-blooded animals. The larvae feed on the host’s flesh, causing severe wounds. The pest wreaked havoc in Texas half a century ago, but was declared eradicated in the 1960s. Eradication is accomplished through surveillance, host treatment, and quarantine, but successful eradication involves the breeding and release of sterile flies. The USDA suspended importations of cattle from Mexico into the US in May to prevent NWS movement north. Should it enter the US, the NWS is estimated to cause losses, conservatively, of $2.1 billion to cattle in Texas, according to the USDA.
• Migrant workers appear to be braving the threat of deportation by continuing to show up for work, The Wall Street Journal reports. WSJ noted that while data covering immigrants lacking permanent legal status is fragmentary, what’s available shows no broad pullback from the labor force, including on farms. A spokeswoman for the American Farm Bureau Federation said that while some farmers report employees afraid to come to work, “We are not aware of widespread interruptions in farm operations due to employees’ absenteeism.” To allay concerns about a shortage of agricultural workers President Trump in April said he was looking into allowing undocumented farm and hospitality workers to voluntarily leave the country for a short time before reentering the country legally, Bloomberg reported. Nearly half (45%) of all agricultural workers in the US – 950,000 of an estimated 2.2 million farmworkers – are "unauthorized" migrants working illegally on farms and ranches.