In a stunning bipartisan letter, released this week, former senior leaders in US agriculture, who served in government and as leading advocates for farmers and trade associations, have warned American agriculture might be moving toward a dangerous collapse. The letter cites tariffs, increasing costs of farm inputs, now much higher than commodity prices, loss of market access, and the doubling of bankruptcies as driving the farming economy toward an unprecedented breaking point. 

The letter includes this clear demonstration of how tariffs and erratic and costly policy decisions drive down market share and economic opportunity for American farmers: 

Consider the impact of the China trade war on soybeans alone — in 2018 , when the China tariffs were initially imposed, whole U.S. soybean exports represented 47% of the world market. Today, whole U.S. soybeans represent just 24.4% — a 50 % reduction in market share. Meanwhile, Brazil’s share of the world export market grew by more than 20%. Put another way, during the same period, harvested acres of soybeans produced in Brazil grew from 83.0 million to 119 million, while soybean acreage in the U.S. fell by more than 7.0 million acres.

This collapse in opportunity and revenues is exacerbated by the degradation of vital international trade relationships. As US policy has pushed even close allies and trading partners to look for new opportunities and better agreements elsewhere. The letter notes: 

The BRICS coalition (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), is dramaticallyexpanding its share of world ag markets, and may well be the single largestthreat to American agriculture. Just this year, the EU has announced the creation of a major free trade bloc with the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) while last month Canada announced a new trade agreement with China.

While the Administration has announced a number of mini-deals and purchases agreements, many of which contain beneficial provisions for U.S. agriculture, these pale in comparison to the markets we are losing and pale in comparison to the enforceable long-term trade deals other countries are securing.

The concerned US farming leaders also note the previous administration did not secure any new long-term trade deals. The problem is worsened, however, by the fact that US trading partners are now being forced to look for stable, long-term relationships with countries that might have been seen previously as less reliable or less closely aligned.

The letter cites severe impacts on US farmers’ market access and incomes from the defunding of both domestic food assistance programs and foreign food aid programs: 

Even as the Administration has disrupted our overseas export markets, cuts to foreign aid and domestic food programs are negatively impacting important domestic and overseas markets for many U.S. commodities, including rice, wheat, and peanuts, undermining U.S. foreign policy, and exacerbating food insecurity here and abroad.

Billions of dollars in farm products were purchased by USAID, in order to support food aid for people in the most vulnerable places around the world. Removing those programs and diverting funding away from those purchases cuts into revenues to farmers and exacerbates all of the other cost, income, and market pressures they are facing. 

Policies that lead to the mass detention of immigrants are undermining the farm economy. This is not about “the worst of the worst” or even about people who entered the country illegally. A large number of those detained over the last year—by most counts apparently a majority—are not unlawfully in the country but are following a legal process to determine what status they should ultimately have.

The letter specifies: 

mass deportations, removal of protected status, and failure to reform the H-2A visa program is wreaking havoc with dairy, fruit and produce, and meat processing. Those disruptions are causing food to go to waste and driving up food costs for consumers. These disruptions are also financially squeezing food and agriculture businesses and sowing the seeds of division in rural communities. Farmers need these workers.

The bipartisan group of leading former officials and farmer advocates, addressing the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate Committees on Agriculture, did not mention climate disruption as one of the issues currently undermining the farm economy of the United States. The reason for that appears to be both practical and political: 

• In practical terms, the most significant major setbacks to farmer revenues and market opportunity, which stem from policies enacted in the last year, relate to trade, tariffs, and defunding of major programs that paid farmers; climate stresses are longer-running and slower-moving, and cannot be immediately addressed.
• In political terms, the current administration is overtly hostile toward even the mention of the word climate, and Republicans in Congress have pushed back on that agenda only in quiet, almost invisible ways. 

There is hope, however, that programs that paid farmers for climate-friendly practices, can be fully funded and extended. Observers of Capitol Hill dynamics suspect those negotitiations might go better if the White House is not focused on them. Members of both parties support subsidies and tax credits that pay farmers for wind and solar energy production, or for better farming practices, but President Trump has preferred to cut programs and give ad hoc checks, claiming personal credit for filling income gaps. 

The letter does mention ethanol and as well as the lagging EPA work on a Renewable Fuel Standard, but does not refer to other programs that would pay for carbon sequestration in richer soils, or support organic and regenerative farming practices, or which would pay a “green premium” to farmers that avoid global heating emissions. 

Environmental pressures from industrial climate disruption are making it harder to reliably harvest food crops, which puts more financial pressure on farmers. If crop losses are not compensated, and insurance is not available or is unaffordable, many small farms cannot continue operating at a loss year after year. This is pushing prices up, even as incomes fall, and incentivizing a shift to the most environmentally destructive large agribusiness practices. And that is not the easy fix it once seemed to be. 

Agriculture relies on attendant and adjacent ecosystems. The Guardian reports:

Ecological harm from pesticides is growing globally, a study has found, with bugs, fish, pollinators and land-based plants among six species groups hit hardest.

Insects suffered the greatest increase in harm from synthetic farm chemicals between 2013 and 2019, the study shows, with “applied” toxicity rising by 42.9%, followed by soil organisms, which faced an increase of 30.8%.

These impacts undermine agricultural production and long-term resilience and opportunity. They also make it more expensive to finance and insure agricultural operations. Human health is also suffering from policies that remove pollution controls and spread toxic chemicals.

The Trump administration has fast-tracked pesticides that contain PFAS—”forever chemicals” that are known to have endocrine-disrupting and neurotoxic properties. Such policies direct funding away from farmers, to non-agriculture industrial actors, while generating huge future costs and undermining public budgets.

The Food System Economics Commission found the world is losing $15.428 trillion per year to unsustainable practices, climate impacts, and negative health effects of current food systems. The letter does not mention these structural losses and risks, but it is worth noting that these economy-wide hidden costs will undermine macroeconomic and fiscal stability of even wealthy countries.

Two of the leading financial regulators in the US—the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—have found that unchecked climate change will destabilize the financial system and the wider US and global economies. There is no way to ignore those pervasive costs not to further distort and undermine the agricultural and food economy of the United States.

The bipartisan letter outlines macroeconomic and local impacts of trade policy, and the need for targeted subsidies and support for innovative practices. Congress will also need to consider that now is the time to address these hidden costs (rising globally by $42 billion per day), make smarter investments to reduce operational and financial risks, and to secure the future of the American farm economy.