Trump’s $12B farm aid was meant as relief. The Iran war is wiping it out
An agricultural relief package meant to counterattack President Donald Trump‘s tariffs on the nation’s farmers and producers met with mixed success and has been offset by rising costs from Trump’s Iran war, farmers and advocates say.
The Trump administration announced a $12 billion relief package last December, following months of trade wars and hardline tariff policies by the president, including a crippling economic stare down with China over buying American-grown soybeans. The United States Department of Agriculture said the one-time bridge payments were in response to “temporary trade market disruptions” and policies under President Joe Biden.
“President Trump will not let our farmers be left behind, so he directed our team to build a bridge program to see quick relief while the president’s dozens of new trade deals and new market access take effect,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a December statement, adding that the plan “ensures American farmers can continue to plan for the next crop year.”
The relief package allocated $11 billion to row-crop farmers who produce crops such as corn, rice and wheat. The remaining $1 billion was set to go to specialty growers who produce fruits, vegetables, tree nuts and sugar, among other products, and are in a separate federal program from row-crop farms.
A report released Wednesday by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that roughly $9.6 billion has already been distributed, with corn, wheat, and soybean producers accounting for 80% of payments. The report notes that the payments provided “some much-needed financial support to row crop farmers,” but that significant financial stressors remain. At the same time, it stressed the need to help specialty producers, who “continue to face significant uncovered losses.”
Those growers are still waiting to receive their payments, with the final filing day pushed back to April 24, and no clear framework in place for how the payments will be doled out. Rollins promised “tweaks” to the program, though she has not clarified what that entails.
Sarah Corden, the research and policy director for the farmer-led watchdog organization Farm Action, said that the disproportionate aid payments and murky framework are “fairly typical,” but called the rollout “problematic.” She noted that producers are especially upset this year, as the bulk of the aid continues to skew toward larger, wealthier operations.
“There’s been a lot of that money that still has not been dispersed, and there has been quite an active pushback from smaller growers on how that money is being spent,” Corden told Salon. “I don’t think anyone thinks it’s enough money in any respect.”
Dennis McKinney, a farmer and cattle producer in Greensburg, Kansas, found the relief to be only temporary. “I think it’s been a big benefit. Not that it would be enough,” McKinney told Salon. “Producers are still facing extremely tight cash flow.”
“It was helpful … but it was by no means a bailout.”
Patrick Janssen, a fellow farmer and rancher in Kinsley, Kansas, shared the sentiment, saying that the relief added a 3% increase in his gross revenue, just covering his losses for the year. “It was helpful,” he said, “but it was by no means a bailout.”
These would be problems enough for the nation’s farmers: stubborn tariffs, an uneven payment scheme, to say nothing of the national decline in farmhands due to Trump’s deportation policies, and an increasingly hot and volatile climate due to burning fossil fuels.
Then, Trump joined Israel and went to war with Iran in February. Global commodity and resource prices skyrocketed, and trade remains snarled in the Strait of Hormuz. For farmers, the war offers yet another brutal complication to an already uncertain situation.
Fertilizer prices have increased dramatically since the start of the war, as the nitrogen and phosphorus needed to produce fertilizer passing through the strait has become scarce. A March study from Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture found that the Iran War has caused a 46% national rise in diesel fuel costs, combined with a spike in fertilizer costs, creating “a severe shock arriving at the worst possible time for spring planting.”
McKinney said that just prior to the war, the cost of a ton of fertilizer was $790.
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“As the war got started, it went to $960, then it went to $980, and now it’s over $1000 dollars a ton,” he said, adding that tariffed countries like Morocco “would supply us with a considerable amount of phosphorus.”
“It seemed logical that we now reduce those tariffs to help bring those prices down. That has not happened,” McKinney said. “We’re looking at extremely high fertilizer prices, and that’s made it much worse.”
Janssen explained that 200 units of nitrogen are used per acre of irrigated corn. With a roughly $0.40 increase per unit of nitrogen, the cost adds up quickly. “You’re looking at about $80 an acre additional crop expense right there,” he estimated. McKinney called the estimation “fairly conservative.”
“Our corn demand is still strong,” McKinney said, recalling 2025’s “record” crop. “We still have a lot of it on hand. Now, rising input costs mean that the hope we had to see prices significantly higher is gone.”
These rising operating costs have moneylenders worried about lending to farmers, according to McKinney and Janssen. “I talked to bankers in the area,” McKinney said. “They’re talking about a lot more foreclosures and a lot of loan restructuring.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot of the same thing, as far as the loan restructuring goes,” Janssen said.
McKinney said that the benefits of Trump’s farm aid have been offset by the costs incurred through the Iran war. “Those $12 billion payments went out. A lot of producers were applying that as principle on their loans. Now that money has to be rediverted to financing higher production costs as they put this crop out,” he said.
Roughly 70% of American farmers cannot afford all the fertilizer they need for the coming year’s crops, according to a report from The American Farm Bureau Federation in April. This had led to 94% of farmers reporting that their financial condition was either the same as the volatile year of 2025 or worse.
“So the situation, it’s really not getting any better,” McKinney said. This state of affairs is not without solutions. The Purdue study suggests that using less fertilizer and switching to less nitrogen-dependent soybeans could bring some relief to farmers. It even posits that “a prolonged strait closure” could drive grain prices so high as to actually turn a profit for farmers.
For its part, the Trump administration appears to be proactive in remedying the situation. Rollins says the administration will tap into the hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff revenue to stimulate domestic fertilizer production.
“We’ve got to reshore fertilizer back to America,” Rollins said at a meeting with fertilizer company executives last week.
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Trump is reportedly seeking congressional approval to roll back restrictions on E15 gasoline, a biofuel consisting of 15% ethanol, for year-round use. E15 is less expensive than regular diesel, but is restricted due to the smog it creates. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency waived those restrictions for the summer due to rising fuel prices caused by the Iran war. McKinney and Janssen think the E15 plan would help this year, and have their own ideas.
“Repealing the tariffs on fertilizer imports would be a good first step,” McKinney said, suggesting that farmers should have “a marketplace that’s not distorted by tariffs.”
Janssen thinks that at least more payments from the Trump administration are needed. “It’s probably going to take double that $12 billion to help keep ratios in place, keep lenders happy,” he said.
Still, the Iran war shows no signs of ending. Tariffs are still in place. Financial relief may help in the short term, but the reasons necessitating it aren’t yet going away. The situation for the nation’s farmers and producers is precarious, with a bleak outlook raising grim questions.
“How do we get through the next year if these conditions don’t change?” McKinney asked. “There’ll have to be changes of some kind.”
The USDA did not respond to Salon’s request for comment.
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