The Brooklyn Rail

I grew up working for farmers in Kansas and living in a small farming community. Most of my friends were from farming families. I knew farmers to be hard-working, fair-minded, good-hearted people.

From the beginning of the rise of Trump, I have marveled at his support among farmers. This steadfast support is so incongruous that it continues to baffle me. In contrast to farmers’ nature, Trump is arrogant, mean, cruel, insecure, faithless, and narcissistic. He has never worked a day in his life and he thinks people who do are losers. Politically, he is oligarchic at best, wanting to cut taxes for his billionaire friends and cut benefits and programs for everyone else, and authoritarian at worst, wanting to overturn democracy and the rule of law in America. What do farmers see in him? Even after everything that’s happened to them since he took over, farmers continue to trust Trump.

The US Department of Agriculture has estimated that 73.1% of people in farming-dependent counties voted for Trump in 2016, 76.1% in 2020, and 77.7% in 2024. This overwhelming support for Trump among farmers and farming-dependent communities was supposedly based on shared cultural values and discontent with the anti-farm status quo, and the promise of better trade deals and regulatory relief from a Trump administration. When Trump’s tariffs in his first term caused retaliatory tariffs by China and other trade partners, he appeased the farmers with billions of dollars in bailouts (more than $28 billion in 2019). But farmers want fair trade and open markets for what they produce, not handouts, and they know that doing it the way Trump is doing it is not sustainable.

When Biden came in, the perception among farmers was that inflation and overregulation increased. Farmers thought that Trump’s tax policies would better benefit them. Democrats supported estate taxes in 2021 (successfully rebranded by Frank Luntz as “The Death Tax),” making it harder for their children to inherit the farm when their parents die. Part of this is still riding on what I call the “Bob Dole Effect” of Republicans’ traditional connection with farmers since the 1980s.

Bob Dole, from Russell, Kansas, had the trust and support of farmers, and it almost got him into the White House. Dole ran for President three times, dropping out in 1980 before Ronald Reagan won the nomination, losing to George H. W. Bush in the 1988 primaries, and then losing to Bill Clinton in a landslide in the general election of 1996. Dole was the only former Republican presidential nominee to endorse Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, but in 2021, on his 98^th birthday, Dole announced that he was “Trumped out.”

In terms of farm policy, Dole was everything that Trump isn’t. Dole was the principal architect of the 1996 Farm Bill that reformed subsidies, and he joined with George McGovern (!) to form the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program that aimed to feed hungry children around the world. He also worked to fund domestic nutrition programs, including food stamps, Women and Infant Children (WIC), and the National School Lunch Program. Dole understood that all of these food aid programs were good for farmers in addition to being good for the world. He also understood how important farmers are, and he was able to effectively communicate this to non-farmers. In his autobiography, Dole wrote, “If you don’t eat, you don’t need to worry about the farmer. Otherwise, his problems are at least in part your problems, too.”

Bob Dole understood that SNAP/food stamps are about farmers. And USAID, that Elon and Trump so gleefully killed, was also about farmers. Farmers grow the food the world needs.

Trump refused to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that 42 million Americans depend on for food, to try to force Democratic lawmakers to do what he wanted, which is to weaken the Affordable Care Act so much that millions of other Americans will lose their healthcare insurance or see their premiums go through the roof. Trump’s ultimate goal is to destroy the ACA/Obamacare. He hates it. But he has no plan to replace it.

Farmers and farming-dependent communities have done nothing but suffer under Trump’s policies. Because of inflation, tariffs, and rising interest rates, their costs have gone up more than 30%. Corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat have all not been profitable since at least 2022. Farmers are being forced to sell their crops for what they did in the 1920s. But beef prices are up 51% and the US herd is the smallest it’s been in 75 years, because so many cattlemen have gotten out of the business.

The cost of fertilizer has skyrocketed, partly because of Trump’s manufactured trade disputes with Canada, drastically raising the cost of potash.

Trump has caused China to stop buying soybeans from US farmers and buy instead from Argentina. Trump’s tariffs may very well be the end of the family farm.

In the first six months of 2025, there have been 57% more farm bankruptcies than last year. The rate of suicide among farmers is three times higher than among other workers. Farmers are killing themselves in shame and despair. They don’t want to be the one that oversees their family’s farm failure. I don’t remember ever hearing about a farmer suicide when I was growing up in Kansas.

Still, farmers continue to support Trump. Why? Fran Lebowitz said that Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person. He’s crooked, but they’re all crooked. He lies, but they all do that. At least he does it openly, without apology. And at least he knows something is terribly wrong and promises change. But I still don’t understand how a working person can be for Trump.

If the Democrats can’t counter this Trump infatuation with sound agricultural and other economic policy, they don’t deserve to be back in power.