SAN ANTONIO (DTN) -- Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday rolled out a new modernization effort to change how USDA interacts with farmers and reduce paperwork in the process with the "One Farmer, One File" system.

Rollins gave a wide-ranging speech at Commodity Classic in which she blamed a lot of farmers' problems on the prior administration while touting Trump's trade agenda, farm program improvements in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and ad-hoc aid assistance including the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program (FBA).

Along with that, Rollins and USDA officials at Classic highlighted the "One Farmer, One File" changes at USDA that were launched this week when USDA kicked off enrollment for FBA payments.

"This is the very first program running fully on this platform," Rollins said.

Just as it sounds, "One Farmer, One File" is meant to provide all of a farmer's USDA program data in one file that will be accessed by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) when a farmer enrolls in a program at the department.

"The One Farmer, One File initiative creates a single, streamlined record that follows you, the farmer, no matter where you go in the USDA system," Rollins said.

Rollins described visiting an FSA office last year in Louisiana and having staff walk her through some of the agency systems and enrollment data for farmers.

"I spent a good amount of time there trying to understand and sit down exactly what our farmers do when they walk in that front door, how they're greeted, what the paperwork looks like, how the paperwork moves through the system," Rollins said. "Are we being the best customer centric, forward, facing, handshaking, support that we can possibly be. And those people were wonderful. They were so proud of working for USDA, many of them for 20, 30, 35 years, but they showed me the reams of paperwork, the room full of stacked files. I was sort of stunned. I had heard that this was the case that USDA perhaps was not the most modern system in terms of moving paperwork and getting support out the door, but seeing it firsthand was a real wake up call to me."

The initiative to modernize computer operations began last year when Elon Musk's DOGE team arrived at USDA. Rollins said she and her team saw an opportunity to merge different computer systems and programs into one.

USDA has had a long-standing challenge trying to update its systems, Rollins said. Prior attempts to solve the problem cost $500 million but didn't create programs that allowed different agencies to interface with farmers more easily. Rollins said USDA had "fractured systems" with as many as 500 computer systems managed by 1,000 different contractors.

USDA is encouraging farmers to enroll in the federal government's login.gov account. USDA began using the login this week for farmers to enroll in FBA. USDA officials said they can quickly track enrollment and had more than 35,000 FBA applications through login.gov in the first few days of sign-up this week.

Rollins said the new program does not mean FSA offices would close or farmers wouldn't be allowed to enroll by going to the FSA office.

"Does this mean I have to do everything on a computer -- no," she said, adding, "Instead, this is an expansion of options for our farmers."

Beyond using One Farmer, One File for program enrollment, FSA also over the next year will use the platform for farmers to file their acreage reports instead of manually certifying acreage by paper. Risk Management Agency (RMA) data will also be included in the single system.

For more details, go to: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/….

DEBATE OVER INPUTS

Over the past week Rollins has been on the airwaves telling cable news anchors input prices are coming down. She made the same comments at Classic on Thursday as well, saying inputs "are starting to moderate some," and are coming down as a result of President Trump's policies.

Rollins cited fertilizer prices are forecast to decline 1.4%, "Not enough, but at least we're going in the right direction."

Rollins said fuel costs are down almost 7% and pesticides are forecast to decline 8.3% as well.

"That's according to all of our number crunchers at USDA, when adjusted for inflation, the altogether average cost of production is going to go down in 2026 for the first time in five years," Rollins said. "This is good progress, but there's still so much work to do, and my commitment to you is we will never stop until we get our arms around why all of these inputs, so many have increased 20%, 30%, 40% at a time when our farmers are barely surviving. We will not rest until we get to the bottom of it and we provide real solutions to you."

Still, three agricultural economists speaking earlier in the day said they have not seen signs that input costs are coming down. Soybean farmers are projected on average to lose $139 an acre this year -- the third year in a row with losses averaging more than $100 an acre. Losses for corn farmers are projected to be similar.

Asked about input prices, Seth Meyer who was just recently USDA's chief economist, said projections don't reflect lower input prices.

"I think we all showed input prices aren't coming down," said Meyer, who now heads the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI).

When it comes to fertilizer, all eight common fertilizers tracked by DTN Retail Fertilizer Trends are moving higher in price right now. All eight fertilizers also are higher priced than a year ago. For instance, at $862 a ton, anhydrous ammonia right now is 15% higher than it was last year.

See, https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Scott Gerlt, chief economist for the American Soybean Association, said if the administration wanted to lower input costs there could be exemptions for agricultural inputs from tariffs -- such as dropping countervailing duties on phosphates from Morocco.

Gerlt also credited the administration for looking into monopolies in supply chains.

"There is a desire to take a look at the structural issues that there hasn't been before," Gerlt said.

Gerlt also said there needs to be some adjustment in cash rents. That's the big difference between U.S. and Brazilian farmers right now. U.S. farmers largely are competitive with Brazil when it comes to most input costs.

"The differentiator is land costs. They have such a low cost of land. Our cash rents are very high," Gerlt said.

Also see, "Farm Leaders Say Heated Talks Open Commodity Classic Amid Cost Squeeze," https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

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