Boozman: Farmers in ‘generational’ crisis

Sen. John Boozman says Congress must act in the next couple of months to help farmers, and that its members know they must do so.

“This isn’t difficulty,” he said in a phone interview. “This is a generational crisis.”

Many farmers are suffering through their worst three years in memory. While livestock producers are doing OK, row crop farmers will lose money planting corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat, said Hunter Biram, a University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service agricultural economist. Cotton farmers will suffer the worst losses at $350 per acre. He has heard reports from agricultural bankers that 25 to 40 percent of farmers might have to liquidate.

The losses in Arkansas would harm not only farmers but also other sectors of Arkansas’ economy. Agriculture and forestry are 13 percent of the state’s gross domestic product, Biram said.

The crisis has three major causes: rising production costs, bountiful domestic and overseas harvests, and the lack or loss of overseas markets. Prices for fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, and interest payments are 47 percent higher than the prices farmers receive for their crops, Biram said. Meanwhile, corn, soybean and peanut farmers are expected to produce record amounts in 2025.

China has been investing heavily in Brazil’s agricultural economy in recent years and now gets its soybeans from there. Furthermore, Biram said China’s tariffs on American soybeans, which were enacted in retaliation to President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, “have basically taken away any competitiveness U.S. soybeans had.” With the Chinese tariffs, U.S. soybeans now cost $14.51 per bushel compared with Brazil’s $11.87. In fact, China hasn’t bought a single bushel of U.S. soybeans this crop marketing year. If anyone in Congress is in a position to do something, it’s Boozman, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry.

He said Congress and the Trump administration are aware of the need to help farmers. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act lawmakers passed earlier this year included about 70 percent of the past-due new Farm Bill. It included the risk management tools that help farmers weather their profession’s boom-andbust cycles.

Unfortunately, that money doesn’t kick in until the latter part of next year. Farmers need a bridge in the meantime. He said lawmakers will provide money in the next several weeks so farmers can get financing. They still must decide how much money to provide and through what vehicle. They could include the money in upcoming bills funding the government. President Trump has mentioned using money collected from tariffs.

“Sometimes in Congress it takes a bit, but understand certainly it has to be done in the next few months,” Boozman said.

Boozman did not offer a dollar figure that he supports. He said it needs to be at least as big as the $31 billion in assistance Congress provided last year, when farmers were in better shape than they are now.

“The good news is, is there’s a real willingness to get this done now,” he said.

The long-term solution is to find new markets, Boozman said. He is heartened by a deal Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ administration recently struck with Taiwan. That country agreed to buy at least $5.56 billion in Arkansas and U.S. agricultural products between 2026 and 2029. Other parts of Asia also don’t produce all of their food and don’t want to rely completely on the Chinese.

Another market is the Food for Peace foreign aid program. It was moved to the State Department after Trump closed the United States Agency for International Development. Before that happened, the government was buying a lot of food from U.S. farmers to feed poor people overseas. Food for Peace is now part of the State Department, but there’s talk of moving it to the Department of Agriculture.

Boozman said the United States cannot afford to lose its domestic food production industry.

“We’ve got the cheapest, safest food supply of any place in the world,” he said. “We take that for granted, but it’s based on a lot of hard work. And so if we lose a bunch of our farms, if we have a bunch of consolidation, then we’ll get ourselves in a situation where we’re dependent on other countries, like we’ve gotten dependent in some other products that are products that we desperately need. Food security is national security, and so because of that, that’s why we need to support our farmers.”

Absolutely. The questions are: What will Congress do, will it be enough, and how many farmers can stay in business until then?

••• Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 21 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac.com.