We’ve written for months about the dire circumstances facing Arkansas farmers. They’re not alone — the rest of the country’s agricultural sector — is on life support too.
Delayed Farm Bill provisions, low commodity prices, rising input costs, weather disasters, shrinking foreign markets due to tariffs and lack of enough new trade deals are just a few of the reasons our farmers are crying for help. Arkansas’ agriculture sector is projected to lose $1.4 billion this season.
At a recent impromptu meeting of farmers in Brookland, Ark., the call for action was clear. Representatives from the offices of U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, Sen. Tom Cotton, and Sen. John Boozman’s offices attended the gathering to hear concerns. Here’s a sampling of the voices they heard:
“I just would like to see somebody help us get our markets back,” said farmer Chris King. “We need our exports, and we just need to be paid for what we do, and that’s not happening, and we’re in real trouble.”
“I think the tariffs are the ice cream on the cake of a perfect storm,” said farmer Scott Brown, who said bailout money is the only path he sees now. “I don’t know a farmer that likes the check program. Nobody wants to take the taxpayer dollars, but nobody wants to go broke, nobody wants to lose everything. Long term, we have to have options, markets, and places to sell our product.”
Farmers are right to call on their elected officials for help. The solution can only be provided by changes in federal policy, which heavily regulates and dictates farming success. It has since the Great Depression.
The One Big Beautiful Bill passed earlier this year with the support of all six of Arkansas’ all-GOP Congressional delegation offers some relief, but not until late 2026, which will be too late for as much as one-third of the state’s farmers, according to some economists’ estimates.
That bill will readjust the farm safety net programs out there, including federal crop insurance and commodity support programs like ARC and PLC. ARC (Agriculture Risk Coverage) is a revenue-based program, paying farmers when their revenue falls below a guaranteed level. PLC (Price Loss Coverage) is a price-based program, paying farmers when the market price for their covered commodity drops below a specific reference price.
“I think your description as a crisis doesn’t understate the problem at all,” Boozman said in a recent interview with me. “It’s not only in Arkansas, but it’s throughout the country, and agriculture is not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s a bipartisan issue.
“We’re in the situation where everything is down unless you’re raising livestock, and it’s not just located in the South or the Midwest — these things also are regional, but not just in the South or Midwest or the Great Plains, it’s again throughout the country. So it really is a crisis. The bottom line is our farmers are in a position where when they put a crop in, it is costing them more than they’ll be able to sell it for, and some right now simply can’t find a market.”
Boozman understands the depth and breadth of the crisis, but he (and others) don’t have a solution for accelerating relief, nor is there consensus for how large the relief may need to be.
Relief needs to come swiftly and in a large way through a financial bailout, similar to what we’ve seen in the past. In recent years, major weather incidents have triggered Congress to act with disaster relief measures that have simply placed cash in farmers’ hands.
Right now, this seems to be the only short-term solution to keep the agricultural economy from cratering further and to buy time for potential remedies from the OBBB and future trade deals to kick in, assuming that will be enough.
Boozman said he was making a presentation earlier this year when Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Senator from Florida, reminded him to emphasize: “John, always tell them, always remind them that food security is national security.”
As Boozman concluded in our conversation, “We’ve got to protect our farmers. We’ve got to protect rural America, which is really what this is all about.”
Everyone sees the catastrophe unfolding. Everyone sees the solutions needed to stop it. But we’re still looking for the political consensus to make it happen. Solving this crisis shouldn’t be this hard.
Editor’s note: Roby Brock is the Editor-in-Chief of Talk Business & Politics. He hosts Talk Business & Politics and Capitol View and a radio program three times a week on KASU.