Rick Telesz farms soybeans, corn and dairy cows on about 700 acres in western Pennsylvania. His soybean crop looks promising this fall, and he will still be lucky to break even. “I hope the harvest is good enough that I can pay for all those inputs I had this spring and summer,” he told NPR.
The reason is cost. Fertilizer prices are up 15% this year, and diesel has jumped 80%, both pushed higher by the U.S. war with Iran. Telesz pays about $6 a gallon for diesel, and his combine alone burns 150 gallons a day. The machines that dry his grain burn more. Trucking companies can add fuel to the freight charge. A farmer cannot. “It’s a cost that a farmer can’t pass on,” he said. “It’s real. It’s painful.”
A trade war on top
China has historically been the third biggest market for U.S. farm exports, but it slashed purchases last year in retaliation for President Trump’s tariffs, and sales this year have only partly recovered. Economist Chad Bown told an audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics that soybean buying is coming back a little but remains far below levels before Trump’s second term. For cotton, wheat, pork and beef, he said, exports were devastated in 2025 with no sign of returning.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects higher farm revenue this year as crop prices rebound and farmers sell more soybeans, corn and cotton. Rising expenses will absorb much of the gain. Producers of all the major row crops are projected to lose money in 2026 for the fourth year running. Faith Parum, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said farmers are “paying way more to grow a crop” and not making nearly enough from it. By her count some 200,000 farms have gone out of business nationwide since 2020.
Staying on the land
Farm bankruptcies were up 19% in the 12 months to June. Joe Peiffer, a bankruptcy attorney who works with farmers in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois, says clients tell him they are sick of working hard and losing money. Still, most do not quit. “Most farmers will farm until the banker won’t loan them another dime,” he said.
Selling off land buys time but is usually a last resort. “I can go buy another tractor, buy another combine,” Peiffer said. “But I can’t buy that 40 acres again.”
Sources
- American farmers are hurting — and worried about their futures
- US Farmers Shun Buyers, Cling to Unsold Corn as Prices Slump
