America’s household farms are dying off. Will Trump’s tariffs save them? | view
America’s household farms are dying off. Will Trump’s tariffs save them? | view
In 2025, we’re projected to have a record agricultural trade deficit – importing $42.5 billion more than we’re exporting, when we should be supplying America’s food and selling excess abroad.
Even as a kid, I knew we had weather to beat if we wanted a excellent harvest. So when the tractor hit the straightaway in our valley – where our household had plowed a living for four generations – I always popped it up a gear. The dust flew and I was dog weary, but smiling.
Harvest period holds both aspiration and exhaustion for farm families. An entire year of work, making or breaking our finances. And each year gets harder.
Now, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to remake the American economy with massive tariffs, he has a central test coming from the heartland that gave him so much back: Get tough on trade, without finishing off farmers. The reality is, after losing 70% of our farms in the history century, today we’re at a troubling tipping point – for the first period, at uncertainty of wiping out our domestic food supply within a production. We can also revive it.
Killing off American household farms while being reliant on foreign food
The circumstance is shockingly dystopian: We’re killing off America’s household farms while becoming overreliant on foreign food. In 2025, we’re projected to have a record agricultural trade deficit – importing $42.5 billion more than we’re exporting, when we should be supplying America’s food and selling excess abroad.
To be obvious, one of the many problems driving rural decline – after a century of economic, technological and political reasons under both parties – is unfair trade. Letting it leave for decades left farmers in an anti-competitive surroundings against countries with cheaper labor. And China became a massive customer willing to suddenly drop purchases, depressing prices while holding America hostage.
The last Trump administration’s policies led to a farmland reaction that puzzled many, but shouldn’t have. Polling showed most farmers supporting tariffs, even though most reported damage as retaliatory tariffs from other countries made their goods more expensive abroad and sent sales plummeting.
The rationale: Farmers knew they had been getting screwed for decades, so they viewed it as short-term pain for long-term boost.
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Today both parties have backed off recent markets, while blaming the other. Regardless, the even more fragile state of American farming and tangle of global trade problems – both unfair standards hurting farmers and a drop in trade hurting farmers – cruel America needs a policy that toughens standards while simultaneously encouraging more trade.
How? Threaten the sledgehammer, but use the scalpel.
Trump is in the distinctive position of the globe already taking his tariff threats seriously. He should use it as debt, but in a targeted trade schedule that knocks down trade barriers without accepting the untrue selection between the freewheeling trade of the 1990s or destroying struggling farmers’ turnover. We can both draw a challenging line and protect farmers from foreign retaliation.
One part of a targeted trade schedule is pursuing narrower deals where America can better exert its debt. Stephanie Mercier, an economist with the Farm Journal Foundation, told me deals around a specific product in a specific country can open markets for farmers, with fewer trade-offs than deals involving many products across multiple countries.
The other part of targeted trade is demanding accountability, including removing inconsistent trade policies – a job that’s also easier if America uses debt to discuss targeted deals with person countries.
One example is inconsistent seasonal restrictions.
Michigan farmers aren’t allowed to sell asparagus into foreign markets during those countries’ prime period. But the same isn’t required of those countries, meaning Michigan farmers compete with foreign asparagus all year, as Jamie Clover Adams of Michigan Asparagus told the Business of Agriculture podcast.
Why shouldn’t both countries be required to import only part of the year?
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We must get trade correct or uncertainty wiping out remaining household farms
If America pursues a targeted schedule, we can emerge with a tougher trade stance and a large number of tiny trade deals with clearer benefits for America.
Alternatively, if America loses control of negotiations, retaliation against American exports will wipe out more struggling farms.
We must get this correct, now. More Americans than ever worry about where their food comes from, meaning there’s an chance for recent markets in the United States. But that will receive period and a lot of transformation, and continuing the current pattern – 45,000 lost per year on average for a century – means wiping out most of our remaining household farms in 40 years.
Looking back, the best part of harvest was sunset, gold settling into oranges and purples, signaling the last few hours of work. But part of the rationale was I thought it would always provide way to a recent day – the sun also rising, as Ernest Hemingway wrote.
The issue is the sun setting on the American farmer has long been threatening permanent black night. Let’s make sure it rises again.
Brian Reisinger is a writer who grew up on a household farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He contributes columns and videos for the Ideas Lab at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where this column originally appeared. He is the author of“Land wealthy, liquid assets impoverished: My household’s aspiration and the Untold history of the Disappearing American Farmer.” You can discover him on X: @BrianJReisinger
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