Trump deals multiple setbacks to US Farmers

U.S. farmers in America's MAGA strongholds are grappling with the effects of President Donald Trump's numerous funding suspensions.

The US rural community voted overwhelmingly for Trump, giving him 64% of the vote against just 34% for his rival, Kamala Harris.

But, despite promises to the contrary, the programs being slashed by the new administration are having a direct effect on an already struggling sector.

On the one hand, farmers who invested in infrastructure and environmental measures upfront under former president Joe Biden’s signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have been left in limbo.

Amidst the flurry of executive orders on Trump’s Day One, one was signed requiring the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to freeze funds for these IRA associated initiatives.

Funds were also frozen for programs such as research into climate-smart crops, according to a letter from House Democrats on the Agriculture and Appropriations committees, cited by The Washington Post.

“Pulling the rug out from these recipients runs counter to the mission of the USDA and will quickly and significantly cripple economic development in rural America,” the letter says.

“We are American farmers, and so we are the people that when we hear ‘America first’..., that message is supposed to be for us,” 44-year-old Elisa Lane, who owns a 15-acre fruit farm in Maryland, told AFP.

“We're the ones that are supposed to be elevated and cared for,” she added. “And this is in direct conflict with that ideology.”

Lane was awarded $30,000 by USDA in 2024 to subsidize a roughly $70,000 solar panel installation on her 15-acre farm, but she’s now uncertain the subsidy will materialize.

Despite the fact the freeze on funds for the sector has since been reversed by the Department of Management and Budget after a federal judge blocked its implementation, farmers reported their funding remained frozen, the Washington Post reports.

Exacerbating the situation is Trump’s freeze on USAid. In 2020, the US government bought more than $2.1 billion in food aid from US farmers. Now $340 million worth of food assistance is on hold in US ports.

In Kansas, where USAid was the main market for farmers’ grain, Nick Levendofsky, executive director of Kansas Farmer’s Union told CNN that the ability of farmers to sell their grain has come to “a screeching halt.”

Add to these woes the introduction of the steel tariff which drives up the cost of already very pricey farming equipment.

Asked if US farmers would continue to support Trump, Levendofsky told CNN, “I think farmers that supported Trump are going to continue to support him until they start hurting more and nobody wants that,” he added.

“They didn’t vote for these things. They didn’t vote for food aid to stop going to hungry people all across the world and they certainly didn’t vote for tariffs that hurt their markets.”

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