‘On the brink of a crisis’: Iowa’s farmers are struggling to make ends meet

Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer from Polk County and the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, is worried. 

Iowa’s farmers, he explained, are not doing well: Faced with President Donald Trump’s tariffs, plummeting farm income, high fertilizer and petroleum costs due to the war in Iran, and difficulty affording healthcare, farmers are struggling both economically and emotionally.

Farmers are no stranger to hard times, Lehman noted. During the Great Depression, 45% of the country’s farms faced foreclosure by 1933. About half a century later, hundreds of thousands of farms defaulted on loans during the 1980s farm crisis. 

“I grew up on the farm, and when I was growing up, we were in the middle of the 1980s farm crisis, and our farm, all of our neighbors’ farms, were under extreme economic stress through very little fault of the farmers themselves,” Lehman told the Iowa Independent. “And it took us a long time to dig out of that situation, a long time for our farms to dig out, and of course, not all farms were able to survive past that time. So we’ve experienced a lot on this farm.”

Now, farmers regularly invoke those dark days of the 1980s when they talk about their current challenges. Things haven’t gotten as bad as decades ago, Lehman said, but if the economy continues as is, he foresees more farms potentially having to shut down, as well as entire rural economies hurting without farmers’ dollars. Rural areas could lose population, schools could be further consolidated, and churches could see a drop in membership in the wake of farm closures, Lehman said.

Nationwide and in Iowa, farm bankruptcies are on the rise. There were 18 farm bankruptcies in Iowa in 2025, a 220% increase over the year before, according to data from the American Farm Bureau Federation. Nationwide, farm bankruptcies increased by 46% during the same time period.

As financial pressures mount, mental health hotlines set up for farmers are seeing an increase in calls. The Farm Aid hotline and the Iowa Concern hotline, both of which help farmers get support during mental health crises, are reporting a rise in the number of farmers reaching out to them.

“Ups and downs for farms like ours aren’t new, but we’re experiencing a downturn now that so many of our farmers are reporting that is putting them on the brink of a crisis,” Lehman said. 

“They are losing money, and their neighbors are losing money, and they’re trying to find every way they can to tighten their belts,” he continued. “They’re putting off machinery maintenance and upgrades. They’re putting less fertility measures into their soil just to make ends meet. They’re cutting back on all their other household expenses and farm expenses that they can. They’re spending less on their Main Street businesses.” 

There’s a confluence of reasons for the most recent economic downturn for farmers, according to a July report from Iowa State University, the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, and the Iowa Bankers Association. The detailed 110-page report points to the Trump administration’s trade war with China, rising costs of growing and dropping market prices for corn and soybeans — two of Iowa’s top crops — and the war in Iran driving up fertilizer prices. 

Foreign reaction to Trump’s tariffs has left farmers in Iowa without the overseas markets they’ve long relied on, Lehman said. China, for example, had been the top importer of U.S. soybeans, and it had long been a major importer of Iowan crops. After Trump levied sweeping tariffs last year, China retaliated with its own import tariffs, and U.S. agricultural exports to China dropped by close to $15 billion between March 2025 and February 2026, according to an analysis published in May by the North Dakota State University Agricultural Trade Monitor. In Iowa, exports to China dropped by $1.2 billion, according to the same report.

“On the whole, farmers are weathering this downturn. Should the situation persist or worsen, though, the negative economic effects will be felt throughout rural communities and Iowa’s broader economy,” Christopher Putin, an Iowa Farm Bureau economist who led the editing of the report, said on the bureau’s Spokesman Speaks podcast. “It’s just the way Iowa’s economy works. A saying that I like to use is that when agriculture sneezes, the Iowa economy catches a cold. So if this situation continues to deteriorate, the rest of Iowa is going to feel the effects even more than it does now.” 

For Lehman, the report, titled “2026 Iowa Agricultural Outlook: The Pressure is Rising,” is a red flag that policymakers need to heed. 

“I think there’s all sorts of very alarming signals from this report, and should be a wake-up call that we are not on the right path,” he said. 

Lehman says farmers have lost their overseas markets in the wake of Trump’s tariffs and don’t have domestic ones to replace them. The number of farm bankruptcies has risen the cost of producing some crops is higher than the revenue coming in for them; and family farms are struggling with  the corporatization of farming, an overdue farm bill, and policymakers who aren’t them. 

“We’re seeing a lack of a commitment from our policy leaders to keep our markets fair,” Lehman said. “We should be doing more to help our rural communities and help our farmers, but we have a farm bill — it’s been eight years since we passed our last farm bill. It’s three years overdue. It’s badly in need of an update.” 

“Farmers are experiencing all sorts of high costs, yet our supports for things like healthcare and supports for our rural healthcare system are being cut,” Lehman continued. “A lot of our rural Iowans are suffering from food insecurity, yet we’re seeing cuts to our food security programs at the time when we ought to be doing more to help people who are having a tough time. We’re cutting all these investments that make a real difference.”

Iowa’s all-Republican congressional delegation has backed Trump’s tariffs, as has the Republican candidate running for governor, Zach Lahn.

“A tariff on Colombian goods doesn’t mean higher prices of coffee in the US. It means American companies buy their coffee from another country,” Lahn wrote on X in January 2025. 

Prior to Lahn saying that, coffee roasters and shops in Iowa had reported that the prices they had to pay for beans was rising because of tariffs. 

Lahn did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee running to fill the U.S. Senate seat now held by retiring Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, has also been a vocal supporter of Trump’s tariffs. In an interview with KTIV earlier this month, Hinson said tariffs provide a more fair economy for Americans. 

“Look, we need to level the playing field. Iowa needs to have a fair playing field for being able to sell our products, both at home and abroad,” Hinson said. “That’s what this is all about, is leveling the playing field and making sure that America is respected on the global stage, so that’s where we need to go with this conversation.”

Hinson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Lehman said that among what seem to be endless financial challenges for farmers is trying to find affordable healthcare. Health insurance premiums increased after congressional Republicans failed to extend tax credits that had helped subsidize the premiums Americans paid for health insurance policies purchased on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Funding for those tax credits expired at the end of last year.

“Right at a time when we should be helping farmers with more of these things, farmers are reporting higher prices for the health insurance they can find — if they can find it at all,” Lehman said. “Some are doing without because they can’t find anything affordable. They’re relying a lot more on off-farm income, which means less time to put into their farm. They’re putting off innovations on their farm, new techniques, new ideas.”

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand’s running mate, Dave Muhlbauer, a fifth-generation farmer and Crawford County supervisor, criticized the current state of the farming economy. 

“Iowa farmers shouldn’t have to work twice as hard just to fall further behind,” Muhlbauer said in a statement sent to the Iowa Independent. “This report confirms what farmers have been saying for years: we’re paying more, earning less, and getting squeezed from every direction, with no help from our leaders.”