The Fence Post published an article describing how President Biden asked Congress to provide $500 million for farm subsidies to increase U.S. production of crops, particularly wheat and soybeans, to address the world’s expected loss of production from Ukraine due to the invasion and continuing war provoked by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden said, “Ukraine was one of the world’s largest agriculture producers. It typically grows 10 percent of all the wheat that’s shipped around the world.”
Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber told FERN that sky-high commodity prices already give farmers incentives to plant more crops. FERN said Glauber was skeptical of the near-term impact of the White House proposal. The wheat incentive was aimed at the 2023 crop, not this year’s, he said. “It’s totally baffling to me. The wheat incentive was convoluted, because it is tied to crop insurance coverage of the soybean crop that would be planted after winter wheat is harvested in late spring.”