A proposed Mini Farm Bill seeks to reform what is grown, where and how, in order to help make American farms profitable again — eventually, without recurrent government bailouts
Anyone with even a remote connection to U.S. ag is well aware of what a perilous time this is for large-scale, conventional row crop farmers.
The stage seems set for another family farm wipeout on the scale of the early 1980s. The really scary dynamic now playing out is that the bad economic news is likely to get worse, and to persist for at least a few years. Why? Because of ample global supplies, geopolitics, the Trump tariffs, progress made by farmers in South America in lowering their cash costs, and last, but surely not least, the undeniable fact that in most years, U.S. grain farmers are priced out of most world markets.
The only way to avoid serious pain and disruption starting this fall and winter, which would especially impact young and heavily leveraged row-crop farmers, is for Congress to include another big bailout in the omnibus reconciliation bill that has to pass and be signed into law in the next few months to keep the government running.
But in today’s deeply divided and dysfunctional public square, how will the Senate muster the 60 votes needed to get from here to passage of an omnibus reconciliation bill that could, and likely will (and should), include a mini farm bill?
The only path forward to get help on the way to farmers that is big enough, and arrives quick enough, is for the leaders in Congress to reach bipartisan agreement on a set of long-overdue farm and food policy reforms.
What might it take to get enough Democratic senators to support a reconciliation bill, with a mini farm bill embedded in it? The political hurdles will be daunting, and include the likelihood that two to four Republican senators will vote “no” on the package for fiscal and other policy reasons.
So, Senate leadership will have to lure a dozen or more Democratic senators to vote “yes” (and NONE to vote “no”) to get the omnibus bill through the process.
Failure to do so will not just trigger a government shutdown — it will bring about immeasurable harm and pain that will spread like cancer through the land. Nearly everyone (except the wealthy) will wind up with the short end of various sticks. This will unfold as inflation and deficits start to rise even faster because of collapsing global faith in the U.S. dollar and our economy. Don’t think it will be that bad? Ask a farmer.
Many of our neighbors, brothers and sisters, kids and grandkids will lose healthcare and social services. There will have to be more cuts in vital research and efforts to MAHA. Several wild budget accounting gimmicks and “novel” ideas will gain traction, like selling off parts of national parks in the Trumpian real-estate deal of the century.
A Mini Farm Bill to the Rescue?
Ironically, forging strong support for a bipartisan mini farm bill may be the only realistic way to dodge this bullet, pass an omnibus bill, and allow the government to function. What might such a bill contain to attract bipartisan support?
Several billion in short-term cash to get farmers into and through the 2026 crop season, when increases in commodity program payments will start to flow that are already baked into the cake.
Reforms will be needed in the commodity and crop insurance programs to start fixing the underlying problems that got us here and to avoid the need for more bailout bills in the future, which farmers say they hate. But will farmers walk the talk when it really matters?
This fall may be the last chance for the ag community to come up with some real fixes that won’t just kick the can down the road. The fixes will have to be created and pushed by farmers, because their agribiz “allies” and surrogates won’t accept what is required to avoid the cliff just around the corner.
The forthcoming government-shutdown dance, and the inevitable game of chicken, may be the best chance in years to reform ag policy. Never let a real crisis go to waste, right? But one day, and maybe soon, farmers are going to find out that the more-subsidies well has gone dry, just like the Ogallala aquifer in the nation’s heartland. And there is actually a connection.
This aquifer is a precious, unique natural resource, akin to a couple of Great Lakes but under the ground. It has been, and continues to be, pumped dry by farmers irrigating high-cost, often money-losing crops that get planted these days only because of exorbitantly generous (but reliable) crop insurance policies and disaster payments.
Funds to cover the steadily rising cost of these programs get through Congress only because of the strong and well-financed lobbying carried out by farm groups and agribusiness interests, and supposedly on behalf of farmers.
Imagine if both a significant share of conventional farmers, and taxpayers, become aware of what was being done in the name of helping farmers (but really harming them), to keep food costs low (they are high and rising in the U.S.), and to feed the world (almost one-half of US farmland produces crops used to make biofuels, coupled with the dismantling of food aid programs that have, for decades, fed some of the world’s poorest and hungriest populations).
The house-of-cards, and myths, propping up our deeply flawed food and farm policies will one day collapse. The confluence of events this fall, and what the Congress and ag community does to work through this latest crisis, will at least bring into sharper focus the need for major reforms.
Tough Choices Ahead
The mini farm bill will need to start a transition in policies governing commodity program base acres and money streams, as well as changes in what crop insurance covers, and at what cost to taxpayers. Policy reforms must be designed and adopted that do several things.
First and most important, the reforms need to help farmers survive through the 2026 crop season, and without sacrificing too much more equity.
Reforms must ensure that most of the new and existing payments to farmers support innovation on the farm, and benefit farmers, by increasing their profit margins per bushel of corn, beans, cotton, rice, wheat, small grains and other crops.
New policies need to make it possible, over time, for farmers to make most of their money from the market, thereby incrementally lowering program costs and farmer-dependence on taxpayers and government. The only way to accomplish this goal is to reduce cash production costs on U.S. farms and ranches, while also avoiding excessive supplies of a few major crops that keep driving down market prices — and net farm income.
Under current policy and market dynamics, the only way most American corn, soybean, cotton, and grain farmers can make real money is to be blessed with good weather over a stretch of years during which enough bad things happen around the rest of the world to shrink global harvests enough to keep markets tight and prices high.
No farmer anywhere in the world wants to base his or her economic survival on a steady stream of natural or human-made disasters undercutting fellow farmers, but that is shaping up to be the business model American farmers must accept, and somehow sell, to their bankers.
Hopefully, enough people in positions of power and influence will realize the time for big changes in farm policy has come. Ideas for a mini farm bill that rise to today’s challenge are beginning to receive attention in Washington, D.C., and for many good reasons.
Perhaps a collective awakening will occur. Business as usual is a risky path forward for American agriculture, and most experienced policy wonks know it.
A Mini Farm Bill Proposal
A mini farm bill must accomplish several things to more effectively serve the needs and interests of both farmers and the country.
First, most commodity programs and crop insurance dollars must be redirected to reward farmers for reducing cash costs of production per bushel, or 100-weight, or pound harvested.
Hasn’t the time come for the country to stop subsidizing unrealistically high yield goals that raise production costs above world market prices? Current policy is doing a great job enriching agribiz corporations that are glad to sell those last units of seed, fertilizer, and pesticides to farmers chasing top yields when everything goes just about perfectly.
The grain trade and food industry benefit too from today’s cheap-food policies that rarely, if ever, lead to lower food costs for consumers.
Second, and especially in the Heartland where the economic tsunami will peak, farmers must diversify their crop rotations to lower costs, reduce surpluses, and begin restoring soil health. Along the way toward these goals, many other widely sought and shared public benefits (cleaner water, less cancer, fewer pesticides in food, more vibrant rural communities) will magically become not just attainable, but unavoidable.
Third, big changes must come about in what is grown, where, and how, and that will only happen when thoughtful, systematic policy reforms, backed by real dollars, drive the train.
Such changes will require sacrifices and transitions impacting millions of people in rural America. A sizable majority of farmers, and their neighbors, must become convinced change is necessary so that their operations, and hometowns, don’t become collateral damage in the wake of failed policy that was, alas, just too tough to change. This will pose a generation-defining test of the ag community’s current leadership.
Fourth, such deep, impactful changes have to be structured in a way that most everyone regards as fair for individuals and as equitable across crops and regions. If this boils down to red state versus blue state farming, America will be the biggest loser.
But the good news is that there is a path forward. It will require solving both the economic problems facing ag in the middle of the country, as well as ag’s big problems along the coasts.
In fact, the only way either set of problems can be constructively addressed is by dealing with both at once. Isn’t that why the nation revisits “national” food and ag policy every five years? A mini farm bill passed in 2025 could, and hopefully will, turn out to be one that finally starts the healing process.
For more details on the nuts and bolts of the mini farm bill proposal Chuck Benbrook and Friends are working on, see hh-ra.org/2025-MiniFarmbill.
