American farmers entered the spring planting season knowing fertilizer would be more expensive, fuel would be costly, and labor would be short. With the growing season now in full swing, they can add a record-setting drought and scarce water supplies to that list of headaches.
An overlapping series of headwinds—ranging from climate to economics and geopolitics—have made farming in the U.S. an exceptionally brutal profession in recent months. The headaches started last year when the Trump administration’s sweeping tariff regime warped the country’s trade policy, raising input costs for farmers and crowding out international buyers. This year, the war in the Middle East has caused the global fuel and fertilizer trade to sputter, further squeezing farmers’ margins.
