USDA Disaster Assistance Updates and Bird Flu Impacts Egg Production
**USDA made several updates to different conservation, livestock, and crop disaster assistance programs to give farmers, ranchers, and tribes better access, especially important after natural disasters.
The Farm Service Agency expanded eligibility and enhanced available benefits for a suite of its programs.
The updates will provide critical assistance to producers who need to rebuild and recover after suffering catastrophic losses of production and infrastructure.
**From 2015 to 2021, the median total household income for commercial U.S. farms rose an estimated 16%, to just over $278,000.
Commercial farms earn more than $350,000 GROSS cash farm income regardless of the principal operator’s occupation.
The median income for all U.S. households in 2021 was $75,201.
On-farm income is determined by farm costs and returns that vary from year to year, and in any given year, a majority of farm households report negative farm income.
**Reoccurring outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza has knocked U.S. egg inventories down 29%.
Through December, more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to the disease itself or to depopulation since the outbreak began last February.
Losses were spread across two waves: from February to June and September to December.
In the final week of December, inventory sizes started to rise, and prices fell.
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