The Trump administration’s announcement of a new trade assistance package, plus congressional agreement on disaster relief for prevented plantings, will put billions of dollars into the struggling farm economy, but the prospective aid is injecting new uncertainty into the planting decisions facing growers across the soggy Plains and Midwest.

With less than two months to go in 2018, American agriculture has endured a major drubbing by hurricanes and rainstorms in the Midwest, the Plains, and the coastal Southeast so far this year.