“Under the One Big Beautiful bill, farm bill program changes are likely to result in higher commodity program payments starting in the fall of 2026, but many are concerned those will come too late and won’t be enough to offset the financial challenges that producers face,” he explained. “Congress has shown it can, at least occasionally, step in and provide significant ad hoc assistance — but it seems very risky to assume that’s going to happen on a regular basis, especially with persistent large government budget deficits on the horizon. USDA also has some discretion to make some additional payments under existing authorities (such as the aid package expected in December), but it faces constraints on how much it can provide without supporting legislation.”
Still, net farm income will likely continue to slide through 2034.
One reason is because of the state of global markets.
Tariffs and trade
The Trump Administration’s tariffs regime has upended global trade. Agriculture has not been exempted.
A silver lining is that tariffs have not impacted ag trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico.
However, tariffs and trade agreement strife has affected beef and soybean markets, as well as increasing costs for machinery and imported parts.
China has paused purchasing U.S. soybeans this year, though an October agreement calls for China to resume its level of past purchases. It remains unclear if they will follow through. How important is the Chinese market to U.S. producers? In 2020-2023, China purchased hundreds of millions of metric tons of U.S. ag products. In 2024, that figure dropped to 37 million. In 2025, the estimated total is shy of 13 million.
Agriculture in the U.S. and around the world
The global population has steadily grown in the past couple decades, but because crop yields have increased, food production has mirrored the increase in people.
Around the world, farmland dedicated to grains and oilseeds in the past two decades has grown significantly — up about 27% in the United States alone. These grains (corn, wheat, sorghum, barley, oats, rye and millet) and oilseeds (soybeans, rapeseed, sunflower seed, peanuts and cottonseed) provide food and fuel for the world, and their use has grown by about 21% since 2002.
Why the growth in that period?
China and ethanol.
China’s use of grains and oilseeds has risen more than 200% in the past four decades.
In the United States, ethanol, made from corn, accounts for much of the domestic corn crop. In 2000/01, ethanol required only about 10 million metric tons of the nation’s corn crop. In 2024/25, that number is nearly 100 million.
Remove China and U.S. ethanol consumption from the global market, and global use of these commodities has barely changed since 1980.
Agriculture in Missouri
Agriculture and related industries are big business in the state, adding more than $90 billion to the economy each year. In Cape Girardeau County, that figure is $600 million.
The state’s ag sector is about evenly split, in dollar value, between cattle and row crop sales. In 2024, sales of cattle totaled about $3.3 billion, soybeans $2.9 billion, corn $2.4 billion and poultry/eggs $2 billion.
There are about 4 million cattle in the state and about 15 million acres of cropland. Each year, growers sell about 315 million chickens.
The state has nearly 88,000 working farms, though the majority of them are small operations. Farms that generate at least $100,000 in sales number about 14,000.
