As the Trump administration, working in concert with fossil fuel organized disinformation campaigns at the local level, slows the construction of clean energy projects, farmers who desperately want those solar, wind and battery projects on their land, to diversify their income, are being squeezed by catastrophic agricultural policies and tariffs, which have collapsed US farmer’s access to global markets.
Looking across the whole economy, it’s as if the Trump administration was a precision guided heat seeking missile aimed at destroying the most important sectors of American power and influence, and it’s working.
Current economic conditions and Trump administration policies could lead to “a widespread collapse of American agriculture,” a bipartisan coalition of former Agriculture Department officials and leaders of farm groups warned in a letter on Tuesday.
The letter to the heads and ranking members of the House and Senate agricultural committees was signed by 27 influential figures in the farming sector, including former heads of powerful associations representing corn and soybean farmers and officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations. It expressed dismay at the “damage done to American farmers.”
While there are many reasons for increasing farm bankruptciesand decreasing profits, “it is clear that the current administration’s actions, along with congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” the letter warned.
The signatories called on Congress to relax tariffs for the agriculture sector, expand international markets, pass a new farm bill and restore funding for agriculture research and staffing.
“Our farmers and ranchers can compete with the world, but they can’t compete with the world with a chaotic set of policy circumstances,” one of the signers, Jon Doggett, the former chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association, said in an interview.
The letter began as informal conversations between retired colleagues about the Trump administration’s economic policies harming the farm economy, Mr. Doggett said. While many farmers share those concerns, Mr. Doggett worried that “we’re not having those conversations in an open and meaningful way.”
“We really want to see more open, frank conversations with room to disagree, so that we can move forward on policy initiatives that are in the best interest of farmers and ranchers across the United States,” he said.
The chair of the U.S. Senate’s agriculture committee warns that farmers are suffering heavy losses, while more than two dozen former industry leaders are sounding the alarm about the risk of a “widespread collapse of American agriculture” ahead of a $12 billion government bailout expected to reach growers this month.
For three years, the costs of seed, fertilizer and other farm inputs have risen while plentiful grain supplies limited profits for farmers, economists say. Then, President Donald Trump returned to office last year, sparking trade disputes that disrupted U.S. crop exports and immigration crackdowns that increased labor costs and left some farms with crops rotting in fields.
Many farmers are now bracing to potentially lose money for a fourth consecutive year. Tough credit conditions are forcing those with limited cash flows to make decisions about what acres to plant and how much fertilizer to buy, economists say.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, U.S. Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a webcast of a conference of state agriculture officials in Washington that farmers growing crops are “losing money, lots of money.” And former U.S. Department of Agriculture and industry officials said in a letter to U.S. lawmakers that Trump administration policies harmed farmers.
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