Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday the Trump administration will announce a plan next month to expand U.S. beef production, but she ruled out making payments to producers to retain cattle.

Cattle and beef prices have soared due in part to the historically low cattle numbers and the closure of the Mexican border as a result of the ongoing outbreak of New World screwworm.

Speaking at the annual Ag Outlook Forum sponsored by Agri-Pulse and the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City, Rollins said the plan “will focus on opening up more working lands.”

She said the administration was working on both “short- and long-term solutions” that address the “shortage” of cattle “and deliver rapid relief. We are developing a robust plan to revitalize and diversify the US beef industry, alongside our great partners in that industry.”

She said that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum would join her in announcing the plan. The Interior Department oversees the Bureau of Land Management, which manages 245 million acres, mostly in the West.

Rollins knocked down rumors that USDA might offer a payment to producers to retain heifers rather than sending them to slaughter, a concept that could in the short term drive up cattle and beef prices, rather than reduce them.

“We have no current plans to offer any payment to beef producers,” Rollins said. “We see how the government getting involved can completely distort the markets, and so currently, there will be no plan – no plan is even under consideration to insert ourselves – through payments into the beef cattle industry,” she said.

Also at the forum, Rollins announced that USDA and the Justice Department signed a memorandum of understanding outlining a joint effort to safeguard U.S. farmers and ranchers from wild price swings for fertilizer, seed, energy, equipment and other key inputs.

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Rollins also said USDA was releasing the remaining $2 billion in payments to farmers under the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, which was funded by Congress last December. USDA has paid out $8 billion so far.

Later, at a brief news conference, Rollins said USDA was not backing off its plan to reorganize the department’s staff around five new regional hubs in Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

She didn’t provide any update on the timing for the reorganization. The public comment period on the plan ends next Tuesday.

“We have no plan to change the five hubs. … We spent six months researching that, and we feel very confident in those five,” she said.

Speaking later at the forum, USDA chief economist Seth Meyer said the 2025 ag economy differs from prior years in that growers are struggling with both sagging crop values and escalated costs for fertilizer, seed, tractors and other crucial farming tools.

"We're not seeing the same moderation in those input prices as commodity prices turn sharply lower," Meyer said at the forum. "We're getting into a negative margin period pretty quick."

Meyer also called his agency's forecast for higher farmer income this year misleading for growers of crops not benefiting from higher cattle prices.
 
"If I take that rising farm income and I subtract direct government payments, the economic assistance from previous years, and I subtract cattle, farm income is down, not up," Meyer said.
 
USDA earlier this month said it sees net farm income, a broad measure of profits, at $179.8 billion for 2025, or 41% higher than the prior year. Total crop receipts are forecast to fall 2.5% while livestock-related receipts are projected to rise 11%. 

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Agri-Pulse's Kim Chipman contributed to this story.