The government shutdown must end before the Trump administration will move forward with emergency payments to producers who are struggling with low commodity prices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday.

“While the lapse in federal funding has ended, NASS has not been able to engage in the necessary data collection and analysis over the past few weeks,” the USDA explained at the time.

As of Oct. 1, because Congress did not pass a new farm bill or extend the 2018 farm bill, Agriculture Department programs that fall under the farm bill are technically operating under the 1938 and 1949 permanent farm laws that have been suspended under more recent farm bills.

Reuters’ Leah Douglas, P.J. Huffstutter, and Julie Ingwersen reported that “during a shutdown, about 42,000 USDA staff would be furloughed, according to the agency’s 2025 shutdown contingency plan, roughly half the agency’s employees.