US Farmers Face a Deepening Cost Crisis

American farmers are being squeezed from both sides — paying sharply more to grow a crop while earning too little to sell it — and many now describe their situation as a full-blown “national farm crisis.” At the center of the squeeze are two overlapping shocks: the U.S. war with Iran, which has driven diesel and fertilizer prices to record highs, and a lingering trade war with China that has gutted a critical export market. Producers of every major row crop are projected to lose money for a fourth consecutive year in 2026, according to NPR.

The pressure is not abstract. Rick Telesz, who raises soybeans, corn and dairy cows on about 700 acres in western Pennsylvania, expects a strong soybean harvest this fall — and still does not expect to profit. “Am I going to make money this year?” he asked. “To be honest, I hope the harvest is good enough that I can pay for all those inputs I had this spring and summer.”

Fuel and Fertilizer at Record Highs

Fertilizer prices are up 15% year over year, and diesel has jumped roughly 80%. Telesz pays about $6 a gallon for the off-road diesel his equipment burns, and his combine alone consumes 150 gallons a day. “It’s a cost that a farmer can’t pass on,” he said. “You take your trucking industry, it’s just added to the freight [charge]. But a farmer, it’s just an added cost he just has to absorb. It’s real. It’s painful.”

The national picture is worse still. The average retail price of diesel climbed above $6.51 a gallon, according to AAA, breaking the prior record of about $5.85 set earlier in September. For John Boyd Jr., a fourth-generation farmer in southwest Virginia and president of the National Black Farmers Association, filling his tractor on a recent Saturday cost roughly $1,000, with diesel running near $7 a gallon — nearly double a year ago. “This is a national farm crisis for farmers,” Boyd told NPR. “I’m having to come up with money that’s really not in the budget. … I’m, as my daddy would say, robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

The Two Shocks Behind the Squeeze

The cost surge traces to a global fuel crunch that intensified after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. Disruptions to Middle East oil shipments, including through the Strait of Hormuz, pushed crude prices higher, while reduced regional diesel supplies left fuel markets tight across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Because natural gas is a key fertilizer input, the same energy shock feeds directly into fertilizer costs.

The second shock is trade. China, historically the third-largest market for U.S. farm exports, slashed its purchases in retaliation for Trump-era tariffs. Sales have only partially recovered — and Brazil has filled much of the void, now supplying 65% of China’s soybean needs. As economist Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics put it during a talk this week, the rebound is thin. “Soybeans are coming back a little bit, but currently [China’s purchases] are at much, much lower levels than they were pre-Trump 2.0,” he said. “For all of the other products — cotton, wheat, pork, beef — the exports were devastated in 2025, and there’s no evidence of them coming back.”

An Economy That No Longer Adds Up

The aggregate numbers tell a deceptively mixed story. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects farm revenue will rise this year as crop prices rebound and farmers sell more volume. But the extra income is being consumed by rising expenses. In its September Farm Income Report, the department projected 2026 net farm income at $158.4 billion, down more than $9 billion, or 5.5%, from last year when adjusted for inflation, while total production expenses rise 4.5% to $492.8 billion. Federal support to agriculture is estimated to rise nearly 70% to $47 billion, a figure that itself underscores how severe the squeeze has become.

Economist Faith Parum of the American Farm Bureau Federation summarized the bind bluntly: “They’re paying way more to grow a crop and they’re not making near enough for it. We’ve had a tough time in the farm economy.” Nationwide, she estimates, some 200,000 farms have gone out of business since 2020.

The human toll is visible in the bankruptcy courts. Joe Peiffer, an attorney who works with farmers in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois, says clients are reaching a breaking point. “Farmers are saying, ‘we’re ready to throw in the towel,’” he said. “We’re sick of working our back ends off and losing money.” Still, most hold on as long as they can. “Most farmers will farm until the banker won’t loan them another dime.”

A Political Reckoning in Farm Country

The crisis lands at an awkward moment for a Republican Party that has counted farmers among its most reliable supporters. Farming-dependent counties voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2024, yet the last year brought spiking bankruptcies and mounting discontent. An April 2026 survey of 974 farmers across 44 states found that 78% ranked input costs among their top three concerns, 94% said the Iran war was raising their costs, and 55% said federal policies of the previous year had hurt their operations — compared with just 19% who said they had helped.

Perhaps most striking, 39% described themselves as “persuadable” in the 2026 elections. That aligns with a broader gloom among rural voters documented in a March poll by the Center for Rural Strategies, which found rural voters uncharacteristically pessimistic about the country’s direction and deeply worried about the cost of living.

Analysts caution against expecting a partisan flip. Farmers make up less than 2% of the U.S. population — one-third the number who farmed in 1960, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Looking at the vote of farmers is a good way to view the concerns that extend beyond the farming community about the costs of living and about how some of the policies of the Trump administration … have really harmed everyday working people’s economics,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College. But, he added, “I think it’s more likely that they just don’t vote.”

The political subtext is sharpest in Pennsylvania’s competitive 10th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Scott Perry defeated Democrat Janelle Stelson by just 1.3 points in 2024 and faces her again this fall. NPR sought comment from both candidates but received no reply.

What to Watch

The immediate variable is the war. Brian Smyser, a seventh-generation farmer in York, Pennsylvania, said the solution is obvious even if the politics are not: “The biggest thing is try to get this war over.” Amanda Verbos, who runs a 13-acre farm near Harrisburg and works as a nurse to subsidize it, framed the underlying problem more simply. There is “a lot of heart in farming,” she said, “but the economics don’t make sense.”

For now, the outlook hinges on forces largely beyond farmers’ control — oil markets, trade negotiations and the trajectory of a war half a world away. Until those shift, many producers say their only realistic goal is not profit but survival: a break-even harvest, another year of credit, and the hope that next season is better than this one.