Farmers ‘brutalized’ as costs ‘go through the roof’ in final days of Biden’s America

American agriculture appears to be wilting in the heat of inflation and a drought of sound economic policy under the Biden-Harris administration, some farmers told Fox News Digital in recent interviews.

“In the agricultural sector, we’re in a recession right now,” Brent Johnson, a farmer and president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, said over the weekend.

“We’ve seen a lot of job losses. We’re seeing negative balance sheets. It’s become very challenging.”

AMERICAN CULTURE QUIZ: TEST YOUR ORDER FROM US TRIVIA ABOUT APPLES, LOOSE BANANAS AND WORKING AT THE BAR

Rising costs are crippling farmers, while the international market for American-grown food has slowed to a crawl “with no new trade deals” under the current administration, Johnson said.

“It doesn’t take someone with a Ph.D. to figure out that the math isn’t working and that we need to do something to make up for what’s going on,” John Boyd, a Virginia farmer and founder of National Black Farmers. Virginia association, said in a telephone interview.

John Wesley Boyd Jr. at his farm in Baskerville, Virginia. Boyd is the president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association. “We have to do something to offset what’s going on,” he said. (Matt McClain for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“We pay $5 a gallon for diesel, and it was probably somewhere around $2 a gallon five years ago,” he said.

“All those costs have gone through the roof, all the input costs — but the corn and soybean prices are down.”

Fertilizer, seed, feed, diesel and labor costs, Boyd said, have doubled since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn in in January 2021.

The economy “makes it very difficult to stay alive.”

Harris is now the Democratic front-runner, along with running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in the race for control of the White House against Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance — and Trump has said on the campaign trail that he would cancel each The Biden administration’s policy, which he described as “brutalizing our farmers” within hours of taking office, should he be elected in November.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA FARMER SHOWS SUPPORT FOR FORMER PRESIDENT, SHOWS LARGE ‘TRUMP’ SIGN IN FIELD

Boyd added that the economy “makes it very difficult to stay alive. And then you have an administration that has not been aggressive in helping us.”

Boyd himself was instrumental in getting it administration to release $2 billion in direct assistance to Black and other minority landowners from groups that have suffered discrimination over the years under federal farm programs.

Trump said on the campaign trail that he would reverse every policy of the Biden administration that he described as “brutalizing our farmers” within hours of taking office if elected in November. (iStock)

“Today’s action will allow more farmers and ranchers to support themselves and their families, help grow the economy and follow their dreams,” the White House said in a July 31 statement about its effort to more important to help farm owners.

Even so, Boyd said, “we’re struggling — and we’ve also lost farmers across the country.”

AMERICA’S VETERANS AND HEROES GET SUPPORT THROUGH BOLD MT. KILIMANJARO FOR CHARITY

About 6,000 farms will close in 2023 alone, according to the US Department of Agriculture, although this is part of a larger trend that goes back several decades.

But today’s troubles run deeper than the basics of a business’s balance sheet.

Aging of the farming population

“You know when farms go out of business,” Boyd said, “there’s not a lot of young people to replace those numbers.”

An aging farming population is just one of the major issues that prompted the recent formation of the Nebraska Farmers Network.

A farmer uses a barn to show his support for former Republican President Donald Trump on Aug. 10, 2024, near Charles City, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“An entire generation of Nebraska farmers and ranchers has an average age of 56.9, and the average age of a Nebraska landowner is 67,” the group states on its website.

The farmer pool dwindled decades ago as young adults, now middle-aged, saw college as a better opportunity than working in the family farm business.

“It doesn’t take someone with a PhD to figure out that math doesn’t work.”

“We missed an entire generation of farmers,” Nebraska Farmers Network co-founder Gabe Sanchez told Fox News Digital.

“EVERYONE IS JUST TRYING TO FEED AMERICA”

Younger adults now believe that a college education is not worth the investment.

“Now there are a lot of young people willing to do the work,” Sanchez said. “What they have lost is the arable land.”

Minnesota Governor and now 2024 Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz is shown campaigning at Farmest in Morgan, Minnesota in 2018 as he runs for governor as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

The Nebraska Farmers Network started last year as a grassroots movement to fight other major issues fueling the farm crisis. Its members argue that these are the failures of big government and greed and the potential threat to global investment.

A consortium of interests, including foreign nations like China, Saudi Arabia and even Canada, plus super-rich investors like Bill Gates, have gobbled up millions of acres of farmland across the country, Sanchez said.

THROUGH TORNADO, WEDDING COUPLE FORCED TO DO FIRST DANCE IN BOWL: ‘CHAOS FOLLOWED’

“They see land only as an investment and not for production value,” he said.

Those non-agricultural investments in the world’s most productive soil lead to higher taxes, which further complicate profits and put the price of farmland out of reach for farmers.

“Farmers are already operating on a thin margin and that margin is shrinking,” Sanchez said.

A combine tractor in a farm field and chimney rock, Scotts Bluff National Monument, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. (Hawk Buckman/Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Neglected government, he said, is a big part of the problem.

“These outside entities are circumventing vague and loosely enforced federal and state laws that prohibit foreign investment,” Sanchez said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“And nobody does anything about it.”

The future of agriculture

The widespread farm crisis is causing a historically strong Democratic voting block to consider another option, said Boyd of the National Black Farmers Association.

“My demographic has historically voted all Democrats,” Boyd said. “Maybe 90% or more Democrat.”

For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews/lifestyle

He added: “But I don’t know if it will be like that in the future. The Trump campaign has a chance to play here, and I think they need to do it more aggressively.”

He said he hopes to hear plans for the future of agriculture from both campaigns.

“We all face problems.”

Sanchez said Nebraska farmers are voting hard for Trump.

He fears that all the foreign investment could be more than a desire to make money in real estate, and calls for more aggressive defense of American farmers and farmland should Trump regain the Oval Office.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER

“Henry Kissinger once said that if you control the food, you control the people,” Sanchez said.

Boyd said whoever is in office needs to do right by America’s farmers.

“We’re the greatest country in the world, man, and that country was built on the backs of farmers,” he said.

“The entire infrastructure of this country was built from farmers. And we all face problems. The numbers right now just don’t add up.”