Assistance program
Commodity Loans and Loan Deficiency Payments
$1.7 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Farm Service Agency, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use;Direct Loans
- CFDA number
- 10.051
- What it does
- To improve and stabilize farm income, to assist in bringing about a better balance between supply and demand of the commodities, and to assist farmers in the orderly marketing of their crops. Marketing assistance loans provide producers interim financing at harvest time to meet cash flow needs without having to sell their commodities when market prices are typically at harvest-time lows. Allowing producers to store production at harvest facilitates more orderly marketing of commodities throughout the year. Market loan repayment provisions specify, under certain circumstances, that producers may repay loans at less than principal plus accrued interest and other charges. Alternatively, loan deficiency payment (LDP) provisions specify that, in lieu of securing a loan, producers may be eligible for an LDP. Both programs allow a producer flexibly to market commodities while providing cashflow.
- Who benefits
- Owner, landlord, tenant, or sharecropper on a farm that has produced the eligible commodities, meets program requirements as announced by the Secretary, and maintains beneficial interest in the commodity. State and County governments may be eligible for MAL's and LDP's when they have a share in produced and harvested eligible commodities on land they own, if the benefits or payments are used to support public schools.
- Who applies
- Owner, landlord, tenant, or sharecropper on an eligible farm that has produced the eligible commodities or, in the case of sugar, a processor or refiner who meets program requirements as announced by the Secretary.
- Authorized by
- Public Law 115-334
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$1.1B
66%
Other
$578.1M
34%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments