Donald Trump’s policies have been a disaster for the nation’s farmers, so much so that a near electoral miracle may soon happen: Kansas, one of the deepest red, most rural states, may elect its first Democratic senator in nearly a century .
Since Trump won farm country handily in 2024, many rural voters in Kansas, Iowa and elsewhere have soured on him because the price of diesel fuel, a key input for farming, has soared by nearly 70%, because farm bankruptcies have surged and because Trump’s trade wars have significantly reduced agricultural exports.
Rural voters are so upset with Trump that polls show that Republican Senate candidates stand a good chance of losing in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, even though Trump won those rural states by 13 percentage points or more in 2024. No wonder Trump is hopscotching madly across Kansas, Iowa, and other states in the midterm campaign’s final weeks.
Read more No one is saying that Trump deliberately hurt farmers, but when he plunged the US into the Iran war and his many trade wars, he showed little concern about what those decisions might mean for rural America. It was nearly inevitable that Trump’s moves would batter farmers – by pushing down soybean and other farm exports and by pushing up the price of fuel, fertilizer and farm equipment. Not only that, Trump’s proudest legislative achievement, his “big, beautiful bill”, further hammered farm country with its major cuts to food assistance and its $1tn in Medicaid cuts , which will cause an estimated 1.8 million rural Americans to lose health insurance.
“ He has sold out rural America with his policies,” said Jon Tester, a third-generation Montana farmer and former US senator.
Even the Cato Institute, a Republican-friendly, conservative thinktank, slammed Trump over what he has done to farmers. A Cato commentary stated that while Trump calls this a “golden age” for farmers, the fact is that Trump’s “ tariffs are inflicting serious damage” on farmers, increasing their input prices and causing their exports to decline by billions of dollars .
This helps explain why farm bankruptcies have jumped by 85% over two years ago.
Indeed, many rural voters have turned against Trump – while nearly two-thirds backed him in 2024, now less than half, 49%, of rural voters say they support GOP candidates this fall, according to a Fox News poll.
At a recent news conference in Washington, John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, sought to convey the pain and anger many farmers feel. “Because of the misuse of tariffs, record high agricultural input costs, soaring fertilizer costs”, and “high interest rates”, Hansen said, farmers “are facing the worst economic and financial crisis since the farm crisis of the 1980s”, when many farms went under because of sky-high interest rates.