As the midterm elections approached, many American farmers were in the dumps.
Their appraisal of both current conditions and future expectations for their farms dropped from August to September.
That’s according to the Ag Economy Barometer, a survey of a sample of farmers that is a joint project between Indiana-based Purdue University and the CME Group, a futures marketplace.
Researchers from the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture noted Oct. 6 that 22 percent of farmers surveyed expected to be better off a year from now, versus 35 percent who thought they would be worse off.
High input costs were reported by a record 52 percent of farmers as their chief concern, and 54 percent of farmers said high prices in general were standing in the way of their financial progress.
The troubles of American farmers have been an ongoing concern for the Trump administration. Many of its actions, including environmental regulations, tariffs, immigration enforcement, and even the military operations against Iran, have affected farmers.
President Donald Trump has taken some action to reduce the impact on farmers, including directing billions in subsidies their way and seeking additional support from Congress.
Yet an Amato Advisors-Farm Journal survey in May found that 55 percent of farmers believe government actions over the past year had hurt farming, versus only 19 percent who believe it had helped—and this was before the second major fuel price shock of the year, which saw record-high diesel pricing.
To better understand what farmers were hoping for and dreading in business and politics, The Epoch Times spoke to several farmers.
Here’s what they had to say.
Nice to Farm in Minnesota?
Jim Schumann used to be in dairy and row crops. He describes himself as mostly retired, though he still has one hand on the till.
Schumann owns a 300-acre farm in southeast Minnesota. He rents out most of that acreage to another farmer and works about 60 acres himself, growing corn, soybeans, and peas.
“For me, most of my cash income is on the rent that I’m collecting, and I haven’t raised the rent any, because the guy I’m renting to is making a little bit of money but not a lot. Actually, last year he lost money on my place,” he told The Epoch Times.
Weather and disease had lowered crop yields significantly, which was one reason why his tenant farmer had a bad year.
Another part of the equation is prices for their produce, which are “not that great,” Schumann said.
Most farmers are what economists call price takers, which means that buyers and markets set and reset the price per volume, and the farmers generally have to take those prices.
Some crops are more storable and can keep a while or be frozen in the hope of better prices later, but perishability is usually a factor.
Farmers thus must contend with both uncertain weather and uncertain prices.
The political climate matters as well. “Things that have happened at the federal level with wars and tariffs have taken a toll, and that’s scared some farmers,” Schumann said.
An effect of those wars that he singled out for concern was the worldwide spike in prices of fertilizer, a necessary and important input for farmers.
Schumann also expressed his disappointment with how the state of Minnesota, under retiring Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, has mismanaged many things, including healthcare.
“For myself, I’ll probably still vote for Brad Finstad (R-Minn.) for Congress. I’m conservative and I know some people will tell me I’m nuts or I’m heartless or whatever, but I’m going to vote Republican,” he said.
“I’ve got neighbors that are Democrats. They’re going to vote differently,” he added.
Finstad is the Republican incumbent in the state’s First Congressional District. The seat is regarded as vulnerable but safe if this isn’t a huge Democratic wave year. The Cook Political Report changed its rating from “Likely R” to “Lean R” on Oct. 16.
Farming is important in Minnesota’s political history, so much so that the state’s Democratic Party is actually called the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. But Schumann doesn’t see how that will be true for future generations.
Young people cannot afford to buy into farming because the price of doing so has increased, Schumann said. In past generations, younger farmers might have bought a 160-acre farm and worked that. Yet that many acres are no longer sufficient to float most family farms financially, and the per-acre price is a huge barrier to entry.
Some recent land sales have been as high as $16,000 an acre, he said, which would put the price of yesterday’s starter farm at over $2.5 million, and equipment is a significant cost on top of that.
“So it’s kind of a dilemma,” he said.
Dairy, Diesel, and Avoiding Disaster in Washington
Jason Vander Kooy is a dairy farmer with 1,400 cows to milk in Washington state’s Skagit Valley, which is closer to Canada than to Seattle.
Fuel prices have been high for most of this year because of the war with Iran. Diesel spiked a second time in recent months after hostilities between Ukraine and Russia resulted in about half of Russia’s diesel refining capacity being taken offline.
The hike in diesel cost Vander Kooy’s farm a lot of money at the worst possible time—harvest time, he told The Epoch Times in early October.
The farm grows corn to feed the cows and could not delay harvest hoping for a lower price.
A normal price for diesel would be about $3 a gallon. At the time, even at a bulk farm rate, the farm was paying closer to $6 a gallon, he said.
“That’s the highest price for diesel we’ve ever paid,” he said.
Prices have only increased since then. The national average on Oct. 26 was $6.352 a gallon.
Total farm operations burned through about 1,000 gallons a day at harvest time, meaning that the daily fuel cost increased from about $3,000 a day to about $6,000 a day.
Vander Kooy said that they could cut down on some costs, with less field maintenance, but that would still not do much to conserve fuel costs, with a reduction of perhaps 3 percent.
Plus, daily fuel use was only one of the ways that diesel was spiking costs, the Washington farmer said.
“It’s not only hurting our operation cost, but everything that gets trucked into our farm and all the milk that gets trucked out. We’re having fuel surcharges put on us,” he said.
“Milk prices right now are not extremely good either,” he added.
Events of the past year haven’t changed who Vander Kooy is voting for in the midterms, but they have altered what he worries about.
“California shutting down a couple refineries this year. That doesn’t help because we’re not building anything new,” he said.
Vander Kooy said that worldwide capacity for refining diesel is far too low and extremely tight. Unexpected stoppages at the remaining refineries and the price increases that would cause fuel his nightmares.
“The dairy industry in Washington state has gone through some tough times in the last couple of years. That’s why you’ve seen so many dairy farms in our area go out of business,” he said.
Some farms got snagged up in financial difficulties involving a local co-op. Many of those problems were sorted, and then fuel prices skyrocketed.
Vander Kooy said that the larger picture was “depressing.” But he reached for a bright side.
“The nice thing is the crops look great. We’ve got good quality feed and plenty of it. The cows are doing well. So there’s a lot of good things going on, too. But sometimes, you’re just one disaster away from, you know, that’s it,” he said.
Squeezing Citrus in California
Eric Bream grows eight different varieties of citrus fruits on his ranch in Central California’s Central Valley region.
His son is running it with him, marking the fourth generation of Breams to work the land there. They are working toward the son running and inheriting the business.
Changes in California state laws and tax structures have made it harder to pass on family farms, but Bream is undeterred.
“It’s a priority for me. And I think that, just based on the way I have things structured, it shouldn’t be a problem for us,” he told The Epoch Times.
His son badly wanted to farm. He left a lucrative career to return to it and help run things, Bream said.
Bream encouraged it, which was very different from the advice his own father gave about farming.
“When I was growing up, this was the 1980s, and things were tough. My dad sat me down and said, ‘You don’t want to do this. Go get an education. Go get a job. Go do something else. I don’t see a long-term future here,’” he said.
Bream doesn’t share his father’s pessimism about farming. He thinks that success for a smaller operation like his is possible, but requires a lot of thinking and planning to get right.
“We don’t borrow money. We cash-flow everything. We don’t take money from the government, ever,” he said.
Some of that planning paid off in helping their citrus farming operations to avoid a huge hit from the price of diesel. The Breams have significant fuel storage and refilled their reservoir before the recent spike in prices.
“You hear a lot of doom and gloom with respect to agriculture and farming. My attitude about it is, I just look at what’s in front of me and ask, ‘How do we get past or around or over this obstacle in the best way possible?’” he said.
Some of those obstacles include fights over water usage in the state of California, and rising labor and contracting costs. Even though the Bream ranch has kept fuel costs down, the spike in diesel has raised what contractors charge to come out and do custom jobs.
Trade wars and foreign farming competition are going to continue to be obstacles to selling his citrus in this and other countries, Bream said.
His operation also does custom farming to assist small generational farms that want to stay operating in the family.
Bream was of two minds about the midterm elections. On the one hand, he thinks it will be “a mess if both houses of Congress flip.” On the other hand, he called himself “a fan of gridlock in government, because every time they try to ‘help,’ most of the time, it makes it worse.”
War and rising gas prices have not changed the way Bream is planning to vote, in part because he thinks worse political changes could be in the wings.
“One of my concerns is what you’re hearing from the left side of the political aisle,” he said. “They’ve become vocal about things like seizing the means of production, and seizing and taking over industries and [threatening] private property rights.
“That’s rhetoric that we haven’t heard in the recent past,” he said.
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