Des Moines Register: “Could Iowa be Facing Another Farm Crisis? Fears Grow as Costs Rise”
Des Moines Register: “As Thousands of Iowa Farmers Plant This Year’s Corn, Soybeans, and Other Crops, Some Farm and Business Leaders Worry the State and Nation Could be in Another Farm Crisis”
DES MOINES – More Iowa farmers are warning that the state’s ag economy is facing another crisis that could rival the 1980s Farm Crisis, according to the latest report on the mounting crisis from the Des Moines Register.
Ashley Hinson has defended chaotic DC tariffs and supported the war in Iran, which is jacking up the cost of fertilizer and diesel. As a result, farmers predict a repeat of the 1980s crisis that crushed hundreds of family farms into bankruptcy and devastated rural communities.
“Ashley Hinson’s votes to defend chaotic DC tariffs and support the war in Iran threaten to send Iowa’s ag economy backward into another disastrous crisis that could rival the 1980s Farm Crisis,” said Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Drew Myers. “Thousands of Iowa farmers won’t be able to survive another repeat of that crisis. They know the current leaders don’t have the solutions to clean up their own mess, which is why they’re ready to retire Hinson before it’s too late.”
Des Moines Register: Could Iowa be facing another farm crisis? Fears grow as costs rise
- It was the height of the 1980s Farm Crisis, a nearly decade-long agricultural recession that remains one of the worst economic periods in Iowa’s history. Farmers struggled with a U.S. embargo on wheat sales to Russia that crashed crop and farmland prices while double-digit interest rates drove production costs sky-high.
- Farmers filed hundreds of bankruptcies. Families watched as county sheriffs auctioned off their land, machinery and homes. Suicides mounted. Grassroots groups placed crosses on courthouse lawns to mark the loss of generational farms. Rural Iowa’s population plunged.
- Now, as thousands of Iowa farmers plant this year’s corn, soybeans and other crops, some farm and business leaders worry the state and nation could be in another farm crisis. Producers face a fourth year of losses and new projections that show U.S. farm income will continue to decline over the next decade.
- A Purdue University survey in April found about 40% of farmers expect tough times to continue over the next five years.
- U.S. farmers already were struggling with high production costs and low prices when President Donald Trump placed tariffs on the country’s largest trade partners last year, cutting exports of commodities like soybeans and leaving farmers with record-size crops they struggled to sell profitably.
- Nationally, farm bankruptcies were 44% higher last year than in 2024, and in Iowa, they more than doubled.
- In February, about 30 former corn, soybean, milk, pork and other commodity leaders, state and national ag secretaries, agribusiness CEOs and farmers wrote congressional leaders, warning that the ag economy is in crisis, given Trump administration policies.
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