JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It has been a turbulent year for farmers, and a lot of the trouble has come from Washington, D.C. The Trump administration's trade policies drove many farmers into the red. The health secretary called some crops poison, and the president's immigration crackdown has exacerbated a severe labor crisis in agriculture. As Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports, many farmers expected better treatment from a Republican administration.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: With tariffs, trade wars, ICE raids and bailouts, 2025 has been a wild ride for many farmers.
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MORRIS: None of that is obvious at Glenn Brunkow's farm on the rolling prairie near Wamego, Kansas, though he'll be glad to put 2025 behind him.
GLENN BRUNKOW: I'm hoping we've hit rock bottom, and we're on the way up. We don't know.
MORRIS: Brunkow's sheep and cattle have been lucrative this year, but his corn and soybeans are another story.
BRUNKOW: The crops, you know, we all know were not good. Prices were not good. You know, anybody relying on crop production, it's been tough.
MORRIS: It wasn't supposed to be this way. In March, speaking to a joint session of Congress just after rolling out tariffs on most of the world, President Trump promised bright days ahead.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer. I love the farmer.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
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TRUMP: Who will now be selling into our home market, the USA, because nobody is going to be able to compete with you.
MORRIS: Problem is, U.S. farmers grow way more corn, soybeans and wheat than Americans eat. Kansas farmer Vance Ehmke says he needs exports and open markets.
VANCE EHMKE: Here on the farm here in Lane County, Kansas, those terrorists have done two things. They have caused the price of everything that we grow to go down, and the price of everything that we buy to go up.
MORRIS: Ehmke says lots of farmers lost money this year. Trade relationships were damaged, and promising farm research was shut down.
EHMKE: Short term or long term, we've had some very bad things happen to agriculture here that I'm going to lay on the feet of Donald J. Trump.
MORRIS: The Trump administration gutted USAID, a food assistance program that had been buying $2 billion worth of commodities annually from farmers like Larry Preisser.
LARRY PREISSER: It's something we didn't need to lose. I mean, it was helping some.
MORRIS: Trump's immigration crackdown scared off thousands of workers, exacerbating a labor crisis in agriculture. His health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, triggered another headache when he set out to ban glyphosate, an herbicide that many farmers rely on, and demonized vegetable oil extracted from row crops like soybeans and sunflowers.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: It's one of the worst things you can eat.
MORRIS: Kennedy's anti-oil seed push cost Tim Mickelson who grows canola, another seed oil crop, in North Dakota.
TIM MICKELSON: We had some very tough days to stomach, watching the market tumble and lose. And it's hard to split off what amount of that is this anti-oil seed movement and what amount is scares of the tariffs.
MORRIS: Cattle were a bright spot for farmers this year, but Trump angered ranchers when he proposed quadrupling beef imports from Argentina. Michael Shepherd, political scientist at the University of Michigan, says farmers expect this kind of uncertainty from the weather, but not from Republican administrations.
MICHAEL SHEPHERD: There does seem to be a real disjoint between the Republican Party and the needs and wants of food producers that we haven't really seen before.
BRUNKOW: Yeah, that's true. You know, we - it's not been business as usual.
MORRIS: Back at Glenn Brunkow's farm, he says things might be looking up.
BRUNKOW: I think the administration understands the damage the tariffs have done to our markets. And we see some reason to be optimistic.
MORRIS: Brunkow says that Trump has done a lot of good for farmers this year. He scrapped a set of environmental restrictions that farmers hated. His Big Beautiful Bill will enhance ag subsidies and cut inheritance taxes on large farm estates. Trump recently announced a $12 billion farm bailout to compensate for widespread losses. Like most farmers, Brunkow still supports President Trump. But with all the uncertainty about shifting farm policies, he's still trying to figure out what to plant come spring.
For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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