September in the American Midwest is usually a time of anticipation, as fields of corn and soybeans ripen to gold and farmers prepare for the year’s most important work: harvest. But this year, as the combines roll out and the bins fill up, the mood among farmers from South Dakota to Minnesota is anything but celebratory. Instead, there’s a growing sense of unease—and even anger—about low prices, lost markets, and policy gridlock in Washington, D.C., that threaten the backbone of rural America.
According to Dakota News Now, a delegation of South Dakota farmers and ranchers traveled to the nation’s capital on September 12, 2025. Their mission: to advocate for long-overdue agricultural policies and plead for relief amid a mounting farm crisis. The farm bill, a cornerstone of American agricultural policy, is now two years overdue. The delays have forced farmers like David Reis of Lyman County to operate in an environment of uncertainty. “You’re trying to run farm country with a whole bunch of ad hoc and add-on provisions and people not knowing what’s going on and what’s going to happen in the future, it’s really tough to do business that way,” Reis explained.
One of the key issues Reis and others are pushing is Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling—a policy long favored by many conservative lawmakers. Reis believes that even if cattle producers seem to be doing well now, market downturns are inevitable. “There’s a sentiment out there that cattle producers do well enough and won’t need that, but we all know the markets come up and they will turn around and we’ll want that in our back pocket when they do,” he said. Representative Dusty Johnson echoed these concerns, arguing that Americans deserve to know where their food comes from, so they can recognize the sanitary and quality differences between domestic and imported products.
But policy debates are only part of the story. The reality on the ground is even grimmer for soybean farmers, who are caught in the crossfire of an ongoing trade war. Chad Johnson, a soybean grower from Groton, South Dakota, described his frustration after a recent meeting with the USDA about the impact of tariffs on commodity prices. “I know there were several questions presented to them, and for lack of a better word, they ignored them. I think it’s a big deal in this country for our soybean farmers because they’re hurting all over and these prices are way below the cost of production right now,” he told Dakota News Now. With China no longer buying American soybeans, Johnson is bracing for financial losses: “We’re going to lose money; there’s just no doubt about it that we’re going to lose money. So that’s the hard answer, I guess, is that we’re going to have to grin and bear it and sell our beans and hope this trade deal gets done.”
These woes aren’t confined to South Dakota. In Minnesota, farmers are facing an eerily similar predicament. As Reuters reported, Minnesota typically exports two-thirds of its soybean crop, with China as the dominant buyer. Yet by early September, Chinese importers had not booked a single shipment of American soybeans from the upcoming harvest—a stark contrast to the 12 to 13 million tons they’d secured by this time last year. Gail Donkers, who chairs the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council, traveled to Washington in hopes of finding solutions. But she, too, has been forced to hold off selling her beans, hoping against hope for a better price or a breakthrough in trade negotiations.
Why the sudden collapse in demand? The answer lies in tariffs. After the Trump administration raised tariffs on goods bound for the U.S., China responded with its own duties, making American soybeans about 20% more expensive than their South American counterparts. Chinese buyers have shifted to Brazilian soybeans, leaving American farmers, as Dennis Fultz of Lyon County put it, “sitting here holding the bag.”
The numbers tell a sobering story. On September 11, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasted a record corn crop of 16.7 billion bushels for the 2025/26 season—an eye-popping 1.4 billion bushels above the previous record. Soybeans, too, are set for a strong harvest, with a projected 4.3 billion bushels, just 300 million less than last year. But bumper crops are a double-edged sword. According to The Farm and Food File, USDA expects the average corn price to fall to $3.90 per bushel—30 cents less than a month ago—while soybeans are forecast at $10.32 per bushel. These prices, already thin, are being further eroded by lost export markets and ongoing trade uncertainty.
Faith Parum, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, summed up the mood: “Persistent trade uncertainty further clouds the outlook…” The American Soybean Association has gone further, urging President Trump to prioritize soybeans in U.S.-China trade talks, warning that retaliatory tariffs are shutting American farmers out of their largest export market.
The consequences are stark. The USDA projects that U.S. agricultural exports to China will plummet to $9 billion in fiscal year 2026, down from $17 billion last year and a record $36.4 billion in 2022. And it’s not just China—recent trade tensions with Mexico, Canada, the European Union, Japan, and India threaten to further shrink American farmers’ access to global markets.
There are some glimmers of good news, at least on the surface. The U.S. agricultural trade deficit is expected to narrow from $49.5 billion in June to $47 billion this year, and further to $41.5 billion in 2026. But as The Farm and Food File points out, most of this improvement comes not from increased exports, but from a $10 billion drop in food imports—a sign of a slowing economy, not a thriving farm sector.
Meanwhile, American consumers aren’t reaping the benefits of lower farm prices. In fact, beef prices have climbed 11% since January, and egg prices are still 16% higher than they were last July. It’s a paradox: U.S. food buyers are squeezed by higher prices and import tariffs, even as farmers are squeezed by low commodity prices and lost sales abroad.
Back in Washington, lawmakers are still wrangling over the so-called “skinny” farm bill, which includes provisions for rural broadband expansion and permanent price support laws. Some believe it won’t pass until 2026. Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to address many agricultural issues through executive action, the lack of a comprehensive, long-term farm bill has left producers in limbo.
For now, farmers like Chad Johnson and Gail Donkers are left to “grin and bear it,” hoping for a trade breakthrough or a policy fix that might restore some measure of certainty. But as the combines roll through the fields and another record harvest comes in, the sense of unease lingers. As recent events have shown, there are no winners in a trade war—only those left holding the bag, waiting for better days.
