Fighting for Our Democracy by Fighting for Farmers

It’s been a tough year on our little farm in southwestern Virginia. Early in the season, we had high temperatures and near-drought conditions that persisted through early June. When it started raining in mid-June we were thrilled. But it pretty much hasn’t stopped since. Though welcomed for a while, that excess moisture has become a launchpad for weeds and various fungal diseases on our crops. Meanwhile, the cost of seeds and plants, diesel for our tractor, and pretty much everything else have reached new highs.

Farming is never easy, and turning a profit from the land is always challenging, even when conditions are good and government policy is supportive. Under Donald Trump, those conditions have worsened dramatically, from the loss of critically important markets and reneging on USDA contracts with farmers, to poorly targeted tariffs and the Iran war driving up the cost of essential inputs. Those cost increases have helped drive American farmers’ debt to record levels, projected to exceed $600 billion by year’s end. Rising input costs and debt help explain why USDA forecasts a decline of more than 5% in net farm income in 2026. That may not sound like much, but if you’re already losing money, that’s just putting you further in the hole.

One of the most important underlying reasons so many farmers are coming up short is the extreme level of corporate concentration in almost every part of the food system, an issue that RUBI, Public Citizen and several farmer-led organizations are working to elevate.

At the Farm Aid-sponsored Farmer Forum this past Friday, a Wisconsin dairyman in the crowd pointed out the absurdity of this corporate-dominated system: The current price farmers are being paid for their milk is in the range of $17 per hundred pounds (equal to about 12 gallons), while the cost for smaller dairies (100 or so cows) to produce that much milk is over $40. When you do the math, that means that the typical small dairy farmer is losing nearly $2 on every gallon of milk they produce! Even the larger family operations, with 300 - 500 cows, have costs 30 – 40% above what they’re being paid.

The retail price, meanwhile, is between $4 and $5 per gallon, roughly four times more than what the farmer is being paid. When you consider not just dairy products, but grains, produce, meat, eggs and other crops, farmers only get about twelve cents on the dollar of what consumers pay.

If you’d like to do something about this, here are four options to consider:

First, support farmers running for public office, like Joy Powers, a fourth generation cattle famer in Virginia’s 9 th Congressional District, Jamie Ager, a diversified meat producer in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District or Bill Hill, a Native American fisherman in Alaska. Along with a great group of union and working-class candidates this cycle, having these farmers’ voices in Congress should improve our policy toward rural and working people significantly.

Second, get involved with Farm Action’s fight against the corporate price gouging the nation’s biggest egg suppliers have been engaged in for much of the last four years. The Department of Justice, in spite of mountains of evidence of collusion and extreme price inflation among the big three egg companies, has proposed a settlement that amounts to little more than one tenth of one percent of their annual profits. This slap on the wrist betrays both consumers paying too much for eggs, and the farmers getting paid far too little to raise them.

Third, download Farm Aid’s Vote for Farmers guide which will help you understand some of the most critical issues facing American farmers, while providing a window into how members of Congress are voting on these issues. The guide also provides links to farm advocacy organizations, along with step-by-step guidance on organizing a community forum, writing a letter to editor and other steps you can take.

Last, shift some of your grocery spending to local farmers, whether directly at a farmers market or through locally owned grocers and retail outlets. When you buy in this way, you not only get wonderful quality food, but you put most of your food dollar in the pockets of the people who produced it. As someone who has sold fruits and vegetables in this way for most of the last three decades, I can tell you that this makes an enormous difference!