Farmers harvesting their crops this fall are also waiting to hear whether they can expect a check from the government.
The administration is reportedly eyeing $10 billion to $15 billion in aid to farmers. President Donald Trump has said that he’d like to use tax revenue generated by tariffs to provide relief for farmers, who’ve lost a key soybean market due to the trade war with China. Yet the expected announcement has been pushed back indefinitely in the midst of the federal government shutdown.
Matt Rehberg operates a farm near the Wisconsin-Illinois border and is the vice president of the Wisconsin Soybean Association.
He says the boycott from China — which purchased around half of all U.S. soybean exports last year — has made this year especially hard for soybean farmers. But he believes bailout programs are only a temporary solution.
“We want markets. Markets are consistent. We can bet on them,” he said. “When you go to these ad hoc bailout programs, they definitely help. But it's kind of like putting a Band-aid on a gunshot wound.”
Along with international trade uncertainty, farmers are also struggling due to a mix of low crop prices and high costs for things like fertilizer, making this an especially tough year for farm finances.
A survey of 1,034 farmers released in September by the National Corn Growers Association showed that nearly half believe the U.S. economy is on the brink of a farm crisis, and two-thirds were more concerned about their farm’s finances than a year ago.
Corn prices, for instance, are down to $4 per bushel this year compared to around $7 per bushel in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On the input side, the USDA reports labor costs are up 47% since 2020, fertilizer 37%, fuel and oil 32% and seed 18%.
Zac Soltvedt runs a family farm in Seymour, Wisconsin, growing corn, soybeans and wheat. Much of the corn he grows is sold as feed to Wisconsin’s dairy farms and “doesn’t hit the international market as much,” he said.
But the prices he expects to get this fall aren’t keeping up with production costs, he said.
“A lot of guys can adjust to low corn price if input prices are lower as well,” he said. “It's [tough] when the corn price falls below cost of production, but input prices are still through the roof. It seems like it's just becoming more and more of a gap there lately that we can't get out from underneath.”
Loss of markets
During the first Trump administration, more than $23 billion in taxpayer dollars was given to farmers to compensate for their trade-related losses, according to a report from the libertarian Cato Institute.
That time around, the tariff battle resulted in a $27 billion reduction of U.S. agricultural exports from mid-2018 through the end of 2019, the report says. Soybeans made up 71% of that lost value.
Rehberg, with the Wisconsin Soybean Association, said the soybean market never fully recovered after the first trade war with China.
“We never regained that lost ground,” he said. “In fact, China went shopping for a new supplier. We became a little less reliable to them, so they went to mainly South America, and started buying soybeans there.”
And another bailout wouldn’t do anything to help farmers regain ground in the Chinese market or grow other international markets, said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois.
“It's not going to fix the lost market problems that we're talking about,” he said. “It could harm farmers in the long run if, for example, costs stay high or we plant soybeans for a market that doesn't exist.”
Because grain farmers typically rotate between soybeans, corn and wheat, most are likely to feel the impact of international trade barriers, Coppess said.
Continuously shifting federal trade policy also makes it hard for farmers to plan for next year’s crop, he said, because they don’t know what markets will or will not be available to them.
“Farmers can't plan around political talking points or slogans and social media posts,” Coppess said. “None of that helps deal with the uncertainties and risks in farming.”
At the same time, Coppess said new federal bailouts to farmers could run the risk of keeping input costs high.
“If all these payments do is pass right through from the farmer to the fertilizer companies and the seed companies to the landlords, then the farmer’s still stuck in this situation where the market isn't there but the costs are not adjusting for what the new market reality is,” he said.
‘Bittersweet harvest’
The uncertainty around a potential aid plan comes during a “bittersweet harvest,” where farmers are pleased with their yields while figuring out “how they're going to come up short one more year,” said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.
“A lot of the farmers that we're going to put out of business are the ones that we need to take over because they're the younger, newer farmers, but they don't have as much equity to ride this out,” he said.
Low crop price and high input costs also contributed to a decline in farm incomes in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, northwestern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during the second quarter of this year, according to an August report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Farm bankruptcies also increased in the first two quarters of 2025, but remain very low overall, according to a September report from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
Joe Mahon, regional outreach director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said some farm income forecasts from the federal government have predicted an increase in farm incomes this year despite the tough economic environment.
“That's because there's expected to be a big increase in the amount of government support to farmers,” Mahon said. “That’s a really important part of the picture.”
While most farmers would prefer to get their income from the marketplace instead of the government, they’ll take a bailout if it helps keep their farm above water, Hansen added.
“If push comes to shove, and they have to pick between getting an additional stimulus check of some kind from the government, or losing their farm, they'll take the stimulus check,” he said. “They won't like it, but it's better than losing the farm.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.