Farm groups and some members of Congress from farm states are decrying proposed cuts to crop insurance and other safety net programs for farmers included in President Donald Trump's budget.
The proposed cuts come even as farmers are facing their fourth straight year of falling income, and could particularly affect farm states such as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska that helped Trump win the November election.
"Clearly, this budget fails agriculture and rural America," American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said in a statement.
The proposed budget would cap the amount of money the US government provides to help farmers pay insurance premiums and eliminate insurance coverage for lost revenue when crop prices and per-acre yields fall. That would reduce the federal insurance program's budget by USD 28 billion over 10 years.
Trump has also proposed reducing subsidies to farmers, cutting those programs by USD 9 billion by decreasing the maximum income level from USD 900,000 to USD 500,000 for a farmer to be eligible. The budget would also cut 5,263 jobs at the US Department of Agriculture, a 5.5 per cent reduction in staff.
Farmers, economists and agriculture experts say it's important to support the agriculture sector, which makes up about 11 per cent of US employment, or about 21 million jobs, and contributes nearly USD 1 trillion to the nation's domestic productivity.
"The strength of the agricultural economy has implications for rural America, but also for the larger US economy," Robert Johansson, the USDA's chief economist, told senators last month.
Michigan Sen Debbie Stabenow, the leading Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, warned that the proposed cuts "would have a disproportionate impact on small towns across our country and leave those communities in crisis."
But some people say there's no need for farmers to worry just yet.
"What I've been telling farmers is let's just relax a bit before we panic. It's going to be hard for Trump to get anything done. That's become really obvious," said Brent Gloy, a former Purdue University agriculture economist who now works full-time on his family's corn, soybean and wheat farm in southwest Nebraska, where Trump had strong support.
Indeed, Republican US Sen Charles Grassley, who owns a farm in Iowa and is a member of the agriculture and budget committees, doesn't expect the crop insurance cuts to make it through Congress.
Grassley considers Trump's budget a non-starter, much like the budget proposals of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who also suggested farm program cuts that never materialised.
"Most budgets are dead on arrival," Grassley said during a recent conference call with reporters. "I don't say that to be negative about any of the three presidents I've said it about."
Farmer Harold Wolle, who lives in a Minnesota county where 55 percent of voters chose Trump, makes the same point and says it's too early in the process for Trump supporters to be disappointed.
"We're fortunate that Congress writes the budget, not the executive branch," said Wolle, who is president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association.
Subsidies for crops and crop insurance have sustained grain farmers in recent years as prices plummeted for wheat, corn and soybeans thanks to favorable weather that boosted harvests.
The US Department of Agriculture reported in February net farm income is expected to fall 8.7 per cent this year to USD 62.3 billion, half of the USD 123.7 billion income posted in 2013.
The Trump administration says the proposed cuts help fulfill a campaign promise to balance the federal budget.
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