US farmers weigh crops and votes as costs surge before midterms

Farmers across the United States are changing what they plant and weighing how to vote as higher fuel and fertiliser costs squeeze their budgets ahead of the midterm elections.

In northeast Arkansas, Paul McKinney's family has grown rice for four generations, but next year they plan to plant much less of it and focus instead on soya, which is cheaper to produce. The shift follows a steep rise in fuel and fertiliser costs since the start of the war on Iran.

Rising input costs

Ryan Loy, an extension economist at the University of Arkansas' Division of Agriculture, said input costs were already straining farmers before the war. He pointed to a trade war with China that began in 2018, the war in Ukraine, disruptions linked to 2025 tariffs and a drought across the US heartland, made worse by climate change.

In Arkansas, usually the country's top rice producer, many farmers skipped rice in favour of soya, which Loy called the least input-intensive crop. The state now has its lowest rice acreage since the 1970s.

When the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, fertiliser costs jumped just as farmers were fertilising during spring planting. Loy found urea fertiliser peaked about 39 percent over his budgeted amount, while diesel costs came in about 72 percent more than budget across the planting, growing and harvesting seasons. For Arkansas alone, he estimated an additional cost of about $343m.

President Donald Trump last week announced an $8bn fuel relief programme for farmers, after $12bn in tariff-related aid in 2025. McKinney, a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, called the announcement welcome but said he hoped for longer-term solutions to prevent "this constant battle for survival".

Farm bankruptcies in the first three quarters of 2026 were up 19 percent compared with the same period last year, and up 73 percent compared with 2024, according to an analysis by the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas.

A Senate run born of hardship

Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation Arkansas farmer, closed her family's 2,000-acre operation last year as costs rose and crop prices fell, saying trade and tariff uncertainty "made the numbers stop working". She is now running for the Senate as a Democrat against Republican Senator Tom Cotton, with a campaign focused on rising costs.

Shoffner wants to end the war on Iran, build trade policies farmers can plan around, invest in local processing and distribution, and pass a robust Farm Bill. Cotton did not respond to a request for comment.

Will votes shift?

Michael Shepherd, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said many farmers, like many rural voters, are committed Republicans whose political behaviour is not particularly responsive to changes in the agricultural economy. Still, a Farm Journal poll in April found that 35 percent of farmers who "usually" vote Republican and 15 percent who "always" do were still considering how they would vote. September polling from Purdue found a majority of farmers surveyed thought the country was "on the wrong track" for the first time this term.

Shoffner has been heavily outspent by Cotton. McKinney, who now farms one of the Shoffner family's former fields, said farmers make up a shrinking share of rural voters, with their strength now in organising rather than numbers.

Observers are watching farm country closely: Texas and Kansas could send Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades, while rural House districts in Wisconsin and North Carolina could prove tipping points for Democratic control.

Source: Al Jazeera.