When Crisis Hits the Field It Hits the Family
As farmers in the South face mounting debt, high costs, climate strain, and Trump’s tariffs, the farm crisis shows how policy choices keep agriculture precarious.
Setting the Stage
KAIT8 recently reported on comments from banker Jordan Andrews about the ongoing farm crisis. Andrews stressed that many producers are struggling under enormous debt loads, unpredictable weather, and high input costs. “It’s not just the interest rates, it’s everything that goes along with it,” he explained, pointing to equipment, fertilizer, and the soaring price of seed.
Andrews’ perspective matters because bankers often serve as the hidden gatekeepers of rural America. They decide who gets loans to plant crops and who is denied credit. Yet the article reveals how much of the conversation around farming still gets framed as individual hardship rather than systemic failure. Farmers are seen as isolated borrowers in trouble, not as casualties of a political economy that has been stacking the odds against them for decades.
Adding to this strain are the ripple effects of Trump’s tariffs. Beginning in 2018, his trade war with China imposed steep tariffs on American soybeans, corn, and other staples — hitting Southern and Midwestern farmers especially hard. Export markets dried up, prices cratered, and even after federal “trade aid” checks went out, many farmers found themselves further entangled in debt. In practice, those subsidies often favored the largest agribusiness operations while leaving smaller family farms scrambling. Contrary to Trump’s claims, it isn’t foreign governments that pay tariffs — it’s American businesses and consumers who shoulder the costs. That matters because nearly one-fifth of all U.S. agricultural production is exported, and soybeans alone once accounted for about a third of those exports to China before the tariffs slammed that market shut. For many, the tariffs weren’t just a temporary setback but a structural hit to long-standing export relationships that may never fully return.
This story emerges as climate volatility intensifies—droughts, floods, and extreme heat wiping out harvests—and as corporate agribusiness consolidates even more control. It’s also happening while Congress debates another Farm Bill, with many lawmakers emphasizing subsidies for large-scale operations rather than small family farms.
The Power at Play
The farm crisis is not simply about bad luck or even bad weather. It’s about structural vulnerability. Farmers have always lived close to the edge, but the balance has shifted dramatically since the 1980s farm collapse. Federal policy prioritized “get big or get out,” pushing consolidation that favored agribusiness giants.
Now, the small-to-mid-size farmer finds themselves reliant on credit, and credit is controlled by local banks that ultimately answer to Wall Street. A banker like Andrews can empathize, but his institution profits from interest payments. Debt is not an accident—it is the business model.
Trump’s tariffs deepened this dependency. When Chinese buyers stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans, farmers who had borrowed against future sales suddenly had no market. The government wrote bailout checks, but the lion’s share flowed to the biggest producers, reinforcing the consolidation trend. Smaller farmers lost contracts they had built over decades and were told to take on more debt to survive until “the market came back.” In reality, the market never fully returned.
And here’s the political twist: many of these same communities overwhelmingly voted for Trump, sold on promises that tariffs would punish China and deportations would restore “fairness.” But deportations cut farmers’ access to migrant labor that actually picked the crops, and tariffs kneecapped their export markets. What was sold as a bridge to prosperity turned out to be a bridge to nowhere, one that now punishes the very families who believed it would lift them. This isn’t about blame; it’s about recognizing how voters were handed the same austerity playbook elites have long applied to cities, unions, and working-class households — only this time the pain was rural.
A Lens of Justice
Farm debt is not just an economic issue; it has deep class and social dimensions. Many small farmers are working-class families who live in rural counties already struggling with poverty. Their labor sustains food systems, yet they rarely see the profits.
The crisis also exacerbates racial inequality. Black farmers, who once owned millions of acres across the South, were systematically denied loans by the USDA and private banks alike. Today, they hold less than 1 percent of America’s farmland. Without addressing this legacy, any discussion of debt relief or farm support risks reinforcing inequities.
Women in farming households carry invisible burdens too. When a harvest fails or bills stack up, they often take second jobs, manage the household budget, or absorb the stress of keeping families afloat. Yet their voices are rarely centered in stories about “farmers,” which are still coded as male.
And then there’s climate. Every farmer, regardless of background, now operates under a new normal of extreme weather. But who has resources to adapt—like irrigation systems or crop diversification—depends on class and access to credit. Tariffs, by choking off export income, stripped away the financial cushion many families might have used to prepare for climate adaptation, leaving them even more exposed.
Reframing the Debate
Conservatives tend to frame farm crises as matters of personal responsibility—bad decisions, too much borrowing, not enough grit. That framing hides the reality: farming is precarious because of policy choices.
We need to shift the narrative. Instead of asking “How can farmers be more responsible borrowers?” we should ask:
Why is our food system designed so that survival requires debt?
Why do subsidies favor large agribusiness instead of resilient local farms?
Why are tariffs sold as punishing foreign countries when in fact they punish American workers and farmers?
Why is climate adaptation treated as an individual burden instead of a public priority?
And here lies the irony: the very arguments elites have long wielded against aid for poor families in cities — “stimulus creates dependency,” “people should budget better,” “the market will sort it out” — are the same arguments now discarded when farmers need bailouts. Rural America’s crisis shows that government support isn’t about dependency; it’s about survival. When farmers demand aid, they aren’t lazy — they’re acknowledging what workers and progressives have said all along: people cannot endure without collective support.
Reframing means pointing out that food security is national security. If small farms collapse, rural communities collapse. If rural communities collapse, the entire food chain becomes more fragile. This isn’t about charity—it’s about restructuring an economy so that those who feed us aren’t bankrupted by doing so.
Building the Conversation
Readers can engage by telling stories that humanize the crisis. Rather than abstract numbers about commodity prices, share how a single family must choose between paying for fuel or paying for seed. Connect farm stress to broader struggles—rising rents, medical debt, climate anxiety—that urban readers understand.
Use ethical appeals: farming is dignified work that should provide stability, not despair. Use logical appeals: a system reliant on endless debt is unsustainable. And use emotional appeals: highlight farmers’ resilience while underscoring that resilience has limits.
The most effective conversations bridge the urban-rural divide. City dwellers may not plant crops, but they eat every day. Showing how farm instability ripples into food prices, supply shortages, and community breakdown can help widen solidarity.
The Counterpoint Trap
Here are common arguments you may hear in response to the farm crisis, with strategies to counter them. Notice that these aren’t just partisan talking points — they’re class-based narratives designed to divide working people from one another while the wealthy keep their share untouched.
“Farmers should just manage their money better.” → Personal Responsibility Red Herring
This argument is old as dirt: it’s the same logic once used to smear poor families in cities as “welfare queens,” now applied to farmers as “bad borrowers.” In both cases, it shifts blame onto struggling workers instead of the corporations and financiers setting the rules.
Takeaway: Aid isn’t shameful — it’s survival. The real problem is an elite system that creates dependence on debt while keeping profits for itself.
“Markets will sort it out if bad farmers fail.” → Survival of the Fittest Fallacy
This framing turns people into disposable parts of an economy. It was used against factory workers when plants closed, and now it’s used against farmers when crops fail. The truth is, collapse isn’t a cleansing fire — it devastates whole communities.
Takeaway: A fair economy doesn’t treat workers as expendable; it ensures stability for everyone while elites stop hoarding resources.
“Government support just creates dependency.” → Bootstrap Myth
When it’s food stamps, aid is scorned. When it’s “trade aid,” suddenly it’s justified. This is the same argument dressed in class bias: help for the poor is dependency, help for landowners is policy. Either way, the wealthy elite remain untouched, free to paint everyone else as takers.
Takeaway: Aid is not the problem. The real dependency is how elites rely on workers’ labor while denying them security.
“Tariffs make China pay, not us.” → Projection
This argument pretends pain is being inflicted on a foreign rival, when in fact the bill lands squarely on American farmers, consumers, and workers. It’s another way elites deflect blame — spinning hardship as patriotism while they shield themselves from the fallout.
Takeaway: Remind people that tariffs are a tax on workers here at home, while the wealthy pass costs down the chain and keep their profits intact.
“Climate change is just an excuse—weather has always been unpredictable.” → Hyper-Skepticism (Weaponized Doubt)
This denialism isn’t unique to climate—it’s the same skepticism elites apply whenever workers demand better wages, safer conditions, or health care. Doubt becomes a tool to delay action while the costs keep piling up for ordinary people.
Takeaway: Point out that elites aren’t the ones losing crops or homes. Workers are — and solidarity means fighting for the systems that protect us all.
Deeper Dive
For readers who want to explore these issues further:
Deborah Fitzgerald – Every Farm a Factory
Explores how U.S. agriculture shifted toward industrial models, reshaping farm life and economics.
Monica M. White – Freedom Farmers
Examines the history of Black cooperative farming, showing how collective approaches can counter systemic racism in agriculture.
Raj Patel – Stuffed and Starved
A global look at how the food system creates both abundance and hunger, connecting farm crises to broader inequalities.
Wes Jackson – Consulting the Genius of the Place
Offers a vision of sustainable agriculture rooted in ecology rather than industrial extraction.
The Last Laugh
For decades, “aid” has been a dividing line — scorned as welfare when it helps the poor in cities, celebrated as patriotism when it props up farms. The truth is, it’s the same thing: working people trying to keep their heads above water in a system tilted against them. We’ve been taught to sneer at one another’s survival while elites cash the checks no one calls aid. In the end, we’re not fighting left versus right — we’re fighting ourselves, while the wealthy sit back and laugh all the way to the bank.