As harvest season begins across the American heartland, many of the farmers who helped elect Donald Trump — twice — are now watching his policies drive their industry toward collapse. What they once believed would be bold, pro-farmer leadership is now being blamed for what some in agriculture are calling nothing short of “farmageddon.”
“It just seems like things have stalled all summer long,” said Brian Warpup, a fourth-generation Indiana farmer who grows corn and soybeans on nearly 4,000 acres. “We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin.”
The hope Warpup mentions — that Trump’s trade wars would lead to stronger deals and bigger markets — has yet to materialize. Instead, Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs, particularly against China, has led to lost export markets, plunging commodity prices, and a surplus of crops with nowhere to go. Add to that the labor shortage driven by Trump’s immigration crackdowns, and farmers find themselves boxed in with rising costs, weak demand, and limited options.
At the center of the storm is soybeans — a $25 billion export market that’s now cratering. China, once the biggest buyer of U.S. soy, has all but cut off purchases this year in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. Instead, they’re turning to Brazil, whose growers are now thriving at the expense of American farmers.
The result? Millions of bushels of unsold soybeans sitting in bins across the Midwest — or worse, rotting in the field.
“Storage is a nightmare this year,” said Ryan Frieders, a corn and soybean farmer in Illinois. “It’s like a tidal wave of problems coming towards Illinois.”
Warpup said he’s rushing to sell off his corn early, just to make room for soybeans. Others are paying rising fees at grain elevators. Some simply don’t have the cash flow to hang on.
From Boom to Bankruptcy
The financial picture is bleak. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, farm bankruptcies were up 55% last year. And they’re climbing again. Ryan Loy, an economist at the University of Arkansas who tracks farm bankruptcies, confirmed they increased again in early 2025.
“It’s going to mean that there’s going to be farmers that are so far at the end of their rope, not able to meet their financial obligations,” said Caleb Ragland, a Kentucky soybean farmer and president of the American Soybean Association. Ragland, who says he’s voted for Trump in every election since 2016, warns the emotional toll could be devastating. “They’re going to see farmers that choose to take their own lives.”
Farmers already face some of the highest suicide rates in the U.S., according to the CDC — and with inflation, high interest rates, and market uncertainty all stacking up, there’s little breathing room left.
Labor Shortage Adds to the Squeeze
While tariffs are slamming the Midwest, West Coast farms are dealing with another Trump-era blow: labor shortages.
Immigration raids and tighter border enforcement have driven away many of the migrant workers that farms depend on to pick produce. And legal visa programs haven’t filled the gap.
“This is not your ordinary farm crisis. We call it ‘farmageddon,’ and it’s really a tough time,” said Joe Jennings, CEO of Daitaas Holdings, a Memphis-based ag tech company.
The result? Unharvested crops. Higher costs. Lost profits. And no clear plan to fix any of it.
Help Coming… Later
Trump’s latest farm proposal — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — promises $59 billion in new funding over the next decade for farm safety nets and tax breaks. But none of the money kicks in until the next crop year. This year’s crisis, farmers say, can’t wait.
Trump acknowledged the pressure in a recent Truth Social post, writing, “I hope China will quickly quadruple its soybean orders.” But behind the scenes, trade talks led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have yielded no public breakthroughs.
“The administration needs to find some solutions,” said Chris Gibbs, an Ohio farmer and former county Republican chairman. “We’re in a mess — a cash flow mess. And farmers aren’t going to be able to pay the bills.”
Gibbs, who backed Trump in 2016 but has since switched parties, called the bailouts from Trump’s first term “hush money to keep them sedated.”
“Well, farmers can’t wait any longer,” he said.
Congress Stalls as Crisis Deepens
On Capitol Hill, the Farm Bill — the foundational piece of ag policy — is set to expire on September 30. A new version is nowhere near ready. Lawmakers say “everything is on the table,” but farmers say they’ve heard it all before.
Some Republicans have proposed using revenue from tariffs to help struggling growers. But that idea would require the administration to admit that its own trade policies are causing the damage — a political pill Trump’s team seems unwilling to swallow.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota and the ranking member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, was blunt: “Our farmers have spent generations building these export markets, only to have them closed off by haphazard tariffs.”
Even Senate Republican leader John Thune, from South Dakota, expressed concern: “60% of South Dakota soybeans are exported and mostly to China, and that market is now shut down.”
Supporters Left Holding the Bag
Perhaps the most bitter pill for farmers to swallow is that this crisis is, in large part, self-inflicted — politically speaking.
Farmers voted for Trump by massive margins in 2024, as they did in 2016. According to Pew, he won rural voters by 40 percentage points. And yet, many now feel abandoned by the very administration they helped put in power.
Eric Euken, a seventh-generation farmer in western Iowa, voted for Trump in 2024. Now, he wonders if the president has any incentive to help.
“The last time when we had bailouts, it was to his benefit to bail us out for future votes,” Euken said. “Buying a future vote is not going to help him one bit.”
Still, he said, something has to give.
“It is a tough situation right now with the lack of markets that we have, or places to market our crop,” Euken said. “And it’s kind of the government that put us in that situation. So I hate to pin it on the American taxpayer, but if they want us to survive, we are going to need some help.”
In the end, farmers didn’t want bailouts — they wanted trade. They didn’t want subsidies — they wanted stable markets. But Trump’s tariff war and crackdown on immigrant labor have created a system where neither is possible.
Now, those who once wore MAGA hats in their fields are staring at empty grain bins, overdue loan payments, and the possibility of losing farms that have been in their families for generations.
More on the story in the report below from MSNBC:
