A professor at the University of Illinois says the Trump administration’s announced Farmer Bridge Assistance Program is expected to help many farmers get back to break even.
Nick Paulsen tells Brownfield, “$50 give or take on corn, $25 to $35 on soybeans, around $30 to $40 per acre for wheat. That would definitely make a dent in the negative return projections for 2025. Maybe even get us to break-even levels on cash-rented situations.”
He says there are signs of a potential commodity price rebound in 2026, but…
“Which is a change from what we’ve had in the last three years, where the next year just tends to look potentially worse than the current year does, but even some of those 2026 pricing prospects right now are not sufficient to get us back in positive return estimates without government programs,” he says.
Paulsen says that some input costs have declined from previous highs, but other expenses, such as seed, crop protection, labor, and interest, continue to financially pressure farmers.
Brownfield spoke with Paulsen at the 2025 FarmDoc Farm Assets Conference in Bloomington.
