While at the Ag Outlook Forum in Kansas City, Farm Director KC Sheperd heard comments from Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins, who laid out new plans to support America’s farmers and warned that agriculture is facing some of its toughest challenges yet.
Rollins emphasized the urgency of her message: “We have a lot, a lot of challenges in agriculture right now,” she said, underscoring that she came to lay out “what President Trump’s vision is, the work that we’re doing,” and to deliver “a couple of fairly big announcements.”
She reminded the audience of agriculture’s historic role: “Although 250 years ago, at our founding, we had a nation where 90% of our people were farmers, today it’s only 1.2%.” Yet, she argued, “that small percentage today is constitutive of all the rest. You not only feed and fuel and clothe us, the American people, but truly the world.”
Rollins warned, “Agriculture in our country today is under threat. You all know it because you live it more than anyone else in the country.” Rising costs, falling commodity prices, and what she called “decades of poor policy and neglect” had left farmers struggling.
She denounced the prior administration for doing “virtually nothing to enforce the hard-fought deals that President Trump won and signed.” As a result, she said, “When we walked out we had a surplus for our ag commodities around the world. When we came back, there was a $32 billion deficit last year we’re going to be close to a $50 billion ag trade deficit.”
Her first major point focused on relief: “Eight weeks into my tenure as Secretary, we rolled out the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, the ECAP, which is helping farmers recover from the economic hardships of 2024.” Alongside that, “$16 billion via the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program, the SDRP, is helping producers recover from severe weather events in 2023 and 2024.”
“These programs have distributed $13.5 billion into the American countryside,” she explained, noting that “more than $5.5 billion to over 344,000 farmers through the SDRP, and more than $8 billion to over 560,000 farmers through the ECAP.” She also announced: “The remaining $2 billion of ECAP funding will be delivered within the week.”
Rollins celebrated a legislative win: “Another massive source of relief for our farmers came this summer when President Trump signed the one big, beautiful bill into law.” She emphasized that for the first time in over a decade, reference prices were increased, along with “crop insurance improvements, enhancing coverage and lowering premiums,” and “making the death tax exempt for about 2 million of our family farms.”
Her second key point was tackling input costs. She listed the challenges producers face: “Seed costs up 18%, fuel and oil up 32%, electricity costs up 36%, labor costs up 47%, vehicles and machinery up 45%, interest expenses up 73%, and fertilizer costs increased 37%.” She declared, “Farmers have enough challenges to deal with—sky high input prices should not be one of them.”
“To that end, USDA and the Department of Justice signed a memorandum of understanding this morning to protect American farmers and ranchers from the burdens imposed by high and volatile input costs,” she said. This joint effort will “take a hard look and scrutinize competitive conditions in the agricultural marketplace, including antitrust enforcement that promotes free market competition.”
On labor, she acknowledged, “US farm labor expenses this year will be over $54 billion,” much of it driven by the costly H-2A program. Rollins announced, “USDA has discontinued [the Farm Labor Survey] and will no longer be used to justify what is an unreasonable increase in that average wage rate.” She added that regulatory changes were already underway to “make the H-2A program more affordable and more accessible.”
Turning to her third point, Rollins highlighted recent trade wins: “In the last six months alone, President Trump has made clear that America’s farmers will no longer be treated as second class citizens.” She pointed to seven new trade deals, including “the Philippines and South Korea opening their markets,” the EU reducing barriers, and “Japan agreed to increase US rice imports by 75% and spend $8 billion in American agricultural products.”
Her fourth priority was biofuels. “President Trump has made clear that this will be the most pro biofuels administration in our nation’s history,” she said. She announced “the highest RVO proposal in history,” emergency E15 waivers, and the extension of the 45Z biofuel tax credits through 2029, emphasizing that these actions “send a market signal that there is a growing need for American grown commodities for fuel use.”
She expanded on this by announcing that “USDA will purchase 417,000 metric tons of commodities from American farmers immediately to support [international food aid] programs.” She noted, “The amount we’re purchasing is equivalent to over 16 million bushels of our row crops a big win for our farmers and producers here at home.”
Rollins turned to farmland security, her fifth point. “Farm security is national security,” she said bluntly. “For too long, the federal government has looked the other way as foreign entities and developers have purchased our prime farmland.” She pledged that “USDA will no longer incentivize the development of farmland for green energy, nor will we use taxpayer funds to purchase these solar panels from our foreign adversaries.”
