BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — Joe Outlaw, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M who prepares studies for Congress, said here this week that he believes Congress will consider the farm bill this year. 

“Up until November of this past year they had not done the work they normally do but now they are there,” Outlaw said to the Crop Insurance Industry Convention in a speech on Tuesday. Of the farm bill, he added, “I think it happens this year.”

For Outlaw, who prepares studies based on representative farms of different sizes throughout the country, action on the farm bill could not come too soon.

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The disaster and market assistance that Congress passed at the end of 2024 is “a bridge” but crop farmers need an effective reference price to get a government payment, he said. 

But the outlook for farmers and ranchers is “the worst all across the board except for livestock that we have ever presented to Congress,” Outlaw said, displaying a set of charts analyzing the current situation on the representative farms. 

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The livestock industry is benefitting to a degree from low feed prices, he said.

The situation of the dairy industry is “not bad,” he said, because farmers are benefiting from low feed prices.  

OFF-FARM INCOME

Anticipating being asked how farms survive when the data shows they are losing money, Outlaw noted that his work for Congress does not include spousal income.

He later told The Hagstrom Report that he also does not take into consideration a farmer’s off-farm income unless it is agriculture-related. But he acknowledged that the off-farm income allows the farmer to stay in business.

Most of the time, Outlaw said, he has been able to tell farmers what they can turn to when prices are low. But now prices for southern crops are so low that southern farmers are going to switch to soybeans, which cost less to put in the ground than other southern crops. That, he said, will put pressure on corn and soybean farmers in the Midwest. 

In cotton country, he said, farmers are already “selling off their land piece by piece.”

“Crop insurance is keeping these people in business,” Outlaw said. 

Sustainable aviation fuel would help everyone “if we ever get there,” he said. 

Land prices stay high until there is a “widespread negative outlook,” Outlaw noted, saying investors are putting money into land, but farmers who got pandemic and trade aid payments “overbid” for land. 

Protecting farmers during bad times does lead to higher land values, but the alternative is a catastrophe, he said. 

Asked by The Hagstrom Report why bankers still say that the crisis is in the future, Outlaw said, “bankers are going to lie” because they don’t want their banks to look bad.