DECATUR, Ill. – The Farm Progress Show (FPS), widely regarded as a massive celebration of all that is great about farming and rural living in the USA, does not often serve as a platform for criticism of the USDA or federal agriculture policy. This didn’t stop University of Illinois (U of I ) agricultural policy and law professor Jonathan W. Coppess from delivering critical remarks regarding the Trump administration’s policy direction on USDA realignment, the farm bill, crop insurance reference prices and more inside the confines of the Illinois Corn-Illinois Soybean tent on Aug. 27.

“I feel bad because I’m like a big, dark cloud over the Farm Progress Show,” Coppess said. “They passed the (Big, Beautiful) budget reconciliation bill that included significant changes to the major parts of the farm bill. Now they are doing a budget reconciliation, and we’re trying to sort these changes out. A particular one of interest to corn and soybean growers are some pretty significant changes in crop insurance that shall we say I am quite concerned about.”

Coppess, who is the Leonard and Lila Gardner-Illinois Farm Bureau Family of Companies Endowed Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy for the U of I Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics, made his remarks on the Illinois Corn and Soy “Your Demand Destination” stage. He served as administrator of the USDA Farm Service Agency, appointed on July 9, 2009, by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during the Obama administration. Coppess, an Ohio native, draws on his experience in federal policymaking to guide his research, extension and teaching in agricultural policy and law.

“I’m quite concerned about how we are shifting this insurance program into much more of a direct subsidy payment program particularly aimed at higher risk areas and southern commodities, and particularly, Texas,” Coppess said. “As you pay for insurance that you’re not seeing indemnities out of, the concern is we’re tilting the system and creating problems immediately and over the long run in terms of the integrity of the crop insurance program.”

Coppess is also concerned about crop insurance changes because of the vagaries of risk management and shifting weather patterns affecting Midwest-Corn Belt crops, and how the changes will affect USDA farm program services.

“So, this is one of the main things we’re trying to understand with my colleagues at farmdoc,” he said. “We’re doing the guesswork of what may happen in an unknowable future with changes that we’re still sorting out.”

The primary concern regarding the changes is the tilting of crop insurance reference prices to favor small-acreage crops in the south, the former FSA director reiterated. “Cotton, rice and peanuts got the bigger increases and larger payments per acre,” Coppess said. “It is a big concern for us in Illinois and the Midwest that this drastic shift was not debated or deliberated on like you would normally see in a farm bill, which means there was a lot less opportunity to fix (problems) as we go through the process. This is where we’re at, and we’re kind of stuck with that through 2031.”

This is because there will be no new farm bill forthcoming, Coppess predicted. “It’s done; there is no farm bill,” he said, in response to a Farm World reporter’s query. “They put into the Big, Beautiful Bill a cut of $200 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and they reauthorized farm programs with the big increases to the subsidy payments. In a political sense, those are the big drivers for getting a (farm) bill done. Once these big programs are reauthorized, there isn’t a driver. Programs that haven’t been authorized will likely be extended.”

Questions remain, however, about the status of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which was not reauthorized and will expire at the end of September if a federal budget is not passed. “Illinois is the second largest state in terms of the rental payments that come in from CRP, so it is a really big program in this state. Of all of the programs we have, Illinois does best under the CRP than all the other states, so we are a little bit concerned about its expiration,” Coppess said.

Citing an example of how the federal crop insurance program has been designed to make Illinois a pay-in state, Coppess noted that over the past 10 years the average Illinois row crop farmer has paid into the federal crop insurance program around $1,000 more per USDA Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) policy than they have reaped in payouts. “This certainly raises questions here as to whether we are seeing policy design to help all farmers equally or to help all farmers get their actual risks fixed,” he said.

Under the realignment, SCO subsidies are now at 90 percent for a coverage trigger and 80 percent as a payment subsidy for Illinois farmers, which is an increase from previous levels. However, “If you’re buying at 85 percent, are you trading off or is it a value? It’s area-wide, so the whole county has to suffer loss to trigger an indemnity,” Coppess said. 

“One of the concerns we have is that it really benefits high-risk areas and high-risk crops, so it’s going to be a moral hazard, to use an economist’s term, where they are actually encouraging production in areas where they have high risk and not necessarily rating it properly so that you are paying for it. This makes it look more like a direct payment program operating under crop insurance. The cynic in me looks at this from the side of the farmer that is not getting indemnities; you are basically donating funds to this process.”

Calling the reorganizing and reconstruction of the USDA “a time of significant uncertainty” and “a disruption,” Coppess questioned whether the Brooke Rollins-led USDA was making wise use of taxpayers’ money or simply performing political theater. “Having once upon a time worked there, please be nice to your county employees who have no ability to change what’s going on at the top,” he said.

To read a farmdoc article addressing the changes to crop insurance and SCO, visit https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/06/the-house-reconciliation-bill-proposal-for-sco-income-support-for-high-risk-farmland.html.