How Does FBA Compare to ECAP
We review the key differences between FBA and ECAP
Last week President Trump and USDA announced the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) program but only provided certain details. In today’s post we provide a chart comparing the FBA to the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP) as follows:
To us the key differences between the two programs that will likely be a little bit detrimental to many farmers are:
One payment limit of $155,000. Although this payment limit is higher than ECAP by $30,000, larger farmers who have farm AGI greater than 75% will not qualify for an extra payment limit and specialty farmers will be even more impacted by the maximum limit dropping from $900,000 to $155,000.
ECAP did not have an AGI limit while FBA imposes the normal $900,000 AGI limit and that likely applies to both the entity collecting the payment and its owners. This may prevent many farmers from collecting a full payment (or in some case any payment).
This bridge assistance will likely only cover 25-30% of estimated Title I losses for the 2025 crop. Will Congress then authorize additional assistance. Only time will tell and we will keep you posted.
Paul - do you believe the AGI limit of $900K will be applied to general partnerships or is it just applied to the individual partners?
Is it possible that the columns are reversed for Initial Payment Percentage and Final Top Up %?