Arkansas' congressional delegation is working to get farmers emergency federal funding amid what many are calling the worst agriculture economy crisis in a generation.

Arkansas row-crop farmers are forecasted to lose well over a billion dollars this year, and many have already burned through equity just to keep going.

Senator John Boozman, who, as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has led calls for federal aid to farmers.

High input costs, a steep drop in crop prices, a dismal global market, and bad spring weather have crushed any hopes of breaking even for many row-crop farmers this year.

Already, farmers who have been in the business for generations are filing for bankruptcy or quitting altogether.

Earlier this month, hundreds of Arkansas farmers gathered in a church north of Jonesboro to plead with staffers from the state's congressional delegation for federal funding to help them make it through this year's catastrophic agriculture economy. Their gathering en masse appears to have moved the needle.

Arkansas' congressional delegation has heard them and is taking action.

"I know how difficult it is this time of the year for them to come out. So, it was a real statement as to what's going on right now with the economics of farm country. I can tell the farmers that the Arkansas delegation is behind them," Boozman said.

The Big Beautiful Bill contains direly needed updates to long-outdated safety-net subsidies for farmers. The problem is, they won't see those federal dollars until November next year—too late for many who are at the end of their rope now.

Southern Bancorp says Arkansas farmers need federal bridge-gap funding by February 1.

While he isn't making promises as to when the aid may come, Boozman says Arkansas' congressional delegation is working to secure it within that timeline.

"So that's the plan: a bridge, some sort of bridge aid. And that's really what we're trying to figure out is what's the easiest and most convenient way... Commodities Corporation, CCC, perhaps some funding there. The president is levying these tariffs, perhaps looking at a way of getting some tariff money, just various things like that," Boozman told KATV.

"And then again, just passing a law, sticking this much smaller law into a bigger package that's going through that just says, we're going to get farmers X amount of money. That's how we did it last year," he said.

Yesterday, Boozman met with the White House to address the farm crisis.

"What we were doing is making our case regarding the very difficult situation that we've got in farm country. The good news is that they're aware," Boozman said.

And Boozman is well aware that a bailout this season isn't a permanent solution.

"We simply have to be able to provide more markets for our farmers. We're working hard to do that. That's really the answer going forward, so we won't get ourselves into this situation next year," he told KATV.

Click here to read the story on KATV's website.