By: Tom Green, HHRA Board Chair and Chuck Benbrook, former HHRA ED
Updated December 13, 2025
Farmers growing major U.S. crops including corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton and peanuts are facing record loses due to steeply depressed crop prices over the past few years, coupled with persistently rising production expenses and disruptions in trade flows.
Today’s cost-price squeeze poses an existential threat for many farmers and all rural communities. Experts are projecting that per acre loses will likely exceed $100 an acre on many farms in 2025, and will likely deepen in 2026, with no end in sight under current policy and market conditions.
HHRA decided to compile and vet food and ag policy reforms to change the trajectory of U.S. agriculture and the food industry for two reasons.
First, the provocative September 30, 2025 piece by Chris Bennett in AgWeb entitled “Outraged Farmers Blame Ag Monopolies as Catastrophic Collapse Looms”. The frustration expressed, and pleas for help in getting through the current crisis, struck a nerve. We urge everyone to read this piece.
Second, as anyone working in food and ag is well aware, new tariffs imposed by the U.S. essentially shut off, or dramatically reduced, sales of soybeans, corn, and some other crops to major overseas customers. This has further undercut already depressed market prices, leading to ballooning surpluses. It has also triggered the need for another round of multi-billion dollar payments to farmers, via the just-announced $12 billion in new payments that are intended to serve as a “bridge” to more favorable prices and income dynamics .
But U.S. income dynamics are inexorably linked to developments around the world. In particular, Brazil and Argentina have made steady strides in lowering the cost of growing, transporting, and shipping soybeans and corn to China and other Pacific Rim countries. Both countries are now able to offer growing volumes at prices well below U.S. costs of production plus transportation.
Bad weather or other disruptions in production will no doubt drive market prices back upward in some years, but long-term trends are clear and their implications are sobering: without incrementally higher public subsidies per bushel of corn and soybeans, U.S. farmers are now largely priced out of international markets, and will remain so even if and as trade policy shifts back toward the unimpeded flow of goods and services around the world.
As a result, something has to give. Major policy reforms will become essential to avoid cataclysmic impacts on current-generation farmers and ranchers, and rural America.
We decided to craft and share the “Farm Economic Vitality and Environmental Recovery (FEVER) Act” because there is little or no serious discussion among ag community leaders, policy experts, or in the Congress, of the systemic reforms in policy needed to avoid ever-larger bailouts in the not-too-distant future.
The large sums of taxpayer money at play — over $40 billion in farm support in 2025, and likely even more in 2026 — heighten the urgency of reaching agreement on substantive policy changes. The pressing challenge is to not invest taxpayer dollars during 2026 and beyond in bigger and better bandaids, but instead in support of the deeper, systemic changes in farming systems that most farmers, advocates for healthier rural communities, scientists, and policy wonks know are needed.
Given today’s political and economic realities, it is hard to imagine that the Congress and Administration will be able to increase payments to farmers enough to prevent unacceptable loses and turmoil in rural America. Within a day of the announcement of another $12 billion in emergency aid, commodity and farm organization leaders started stressing the need for more aid by mid-2026.
Leading up to midterm elections in November 2026, the Administration and Congress are unlikely to support further cuts in SNAP and other food security programs to free up money for another infusion of taxpayer support delivered via existing farm commodity programs.
Strong, bipartisan support will be needed to appropriate significant new funding to support farmers in 2026. One promising path, or formula, to create such support is open debate about the systematic policy reforms needed to effectively address the underlying problems with current farm commodity and crop insurance programs, reforms like those called for by the farmers quoted in Chris Bennett’s piece.
We are working to vet and continuously improve the FEVER Act in the hope it provides farmers, farm organizations, and policy leaders some fresh thinking and new ideas about how to solve at least some of the long-term, policy-driven problems. At the top of the list are aspects of food and ag policy that are tying the hands of farmers who see a need to change, enhance soil health, and MAHA, but cannot afford to move ahead because agronomically needed and sound changes would lead, over time, to less financial support from existing commodity and crop insurance programs.
As made clear in thoughtful assessments by Bloomberg of the current economic and environmental crises facing rural America, farmers want to earn their living from markets, and end reliance on government bailouts. They also want to receive sufficient income to invest steadily in the people running and working on their farms, as well as in system changes that will enhance soil health and water quality.
History Does Repeat Itself Until…
The current crisis continues the long-standing pattern of gradual decline in farm numbers and farm profitability. Stubborn downward trends are punctuated by sharp, episodic cycles in the U.S. farm economy that, when prices tank relative to trend, require new bailouts and subsidy streams. Poor stewardship of our ag assets is reflected in the loss of so many U.S. farms since 1980, including 160,000 since 2017, coupled with ongoing slippage in profitability, soil health, and water quality.
Our food and farming problems are complex and intertwined, and rooted in policies far past their “best used by” date. Fixing problems that have worsened over decades will take time and money, both of which are in short supply. Hence, the need for aggressive and innovative policy reforms.
Think of the FEVER Act as a template for a Project 2029 designed to guide food and farm policy reform. It describes a set of policy reforms of the scope and scale required to bring about meaningful, long-term improvements in the U.S. food and fiber system. Most of the suggested reforms are not new ideas, but how they can be integrated and guide cost-effective, sustained investments in healthier food and farms over the next generation is new, and must be grounded in contemporary political reality and market conditions,
The policy reforms we hope to incorporate in the FEVER Act will be focused on national priorities. These include:
- Getting farmers through the current net income crisis, while avoiding harm or undercutting farms and ranches that remain profitable, despite contemporary headwinds,
- Securing bipartisan support in Congress for what is bound to be historically significant changes in taxpayer support for farmers over the next 5 to 10 years,
- Reducing dependence on government subsidies, bailouts, and food imports,
- Modernizing pesticide regulation, food nutritional quality testing and labelling, the National Organic Program, and most fundamentally,
- Assuring that the primary purpose, and major focus of government expenditures, is restoring soil health and public health, as opposed to sustaining farming systems and business models that have become progressively less economically and environmentally viable.
At this time, the FEVER Act covers changes primarily in the commodity program, crop insurance, and conservation sections of a typical farm bill. Funding and reforms needed in the SNAP and other food assistance programs, research and extension, rural development, and in USDA-administered marketing and regulatory programs will be added in the coming months. Reforms needed in certain areas of regulatory and food policy law will also be addressed, including some reforms not typically addressed in a farm bill.
The FEVER Act is a living document. It will evolve – and we hope improve — as new and better ideas are advanced. Please email your suggestions to Chuck Benbrook (charlesbenbrook@gmail.com). Concrete, specific policy reform proposals will be most helpful.
Sources and Key Documents
V.1 of the “Farm Economic Vitality and Environmental Recovery Act”, compiled by HHRA.
“Outraged Farmers Blame Ag Monopolies as Catastrophic Collapse Looms”, Chris Bennett, Farm Journal’s AgWeb, September 30, 2025.
Economic Challenges: “Why the World Is Turning Away From American Agriculture”,
Environmental Challenges: “America’s Big Agriculture Problem Is Getting Worse”, Bloomberg Originals, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KXOO3gK5wo