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farmers
Why Aren't American Farmers Protesting in the Streets?
Perhaps farmers in the United States should look south, to Mexico specifically, for guidance on what they should do to improve their economic situation.
Nov 08, 2025
If there ever was a time for American farmers to protest, then that time is now.
Contract cancellations and frozen grant payments early in Trump's term paralyzed a series of projects for American producers, from financing new irrigation systems to strengthening local markets. Adding insult to injury, soy farmers nearly became a casualty in our administration’s trade war with China. But details of the current deal, while a much-needed reprieve, show that the negotiated soy purchases from China do nothing more than return farmers to Biden-level acquisitions. This, as US cattle ranchers have been left stretching their heads when a deal was brokered to purchase beef from Argentine ranchers, and American farmer calls for country of origin labeling and to challenge meat industry corporations are ignored.
Perhaps farmers in the United States should look south, to Mexico specifically, for guidance on what they should do to improve their economic situation. There, since mid-October, over 100,000 farmers from all over the country have participated in protests—roadblocks, to be precise—to demand that the Steinbaum government pass policies to address their economic problems. More than symbolic, the Mexican farmer protests have got results—spurring the government to make concessions and engage in dialogue.
Mexican farmers, even though they are on average smaller than their counterparts in the US, face the same general problem of dealing with low commodity prices alongside high fertilizer and pesticide costs. What has triggered the Mexican protests of late is how corn farmers are enduring the lowest prices since 2017, as over the course of 2025 they have seen the price for their product drop 21%.
To face this situation, the farmers took matters into their own hands and went to the streets.
Coordinated by el Frente Nacional para el Rescate del Campo Mexicano (the National Front to Rescue the Mexican Countryside), which emerged in 2023 and includes groups from around the country, farmers launched a national strike on October 14th. Their strike doesn’t stop production, but the circulation of goods, blocking roads around the country including at tollways. They demand a floor price, and that their government renegotiate the USMCA to stop the flow of cheap corn and other products from the United States. Joining the corn farmers, avocado and lemon producers are also demanding stable prices. In addition to their economic demands, the farmers have denounced the lack of law and order in the countryside, with some having to pay cartels so that they can market their crops. Such demands have been met with violence, with one farmer, Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, killed on October 20th for speaking out when seeking economic justice.
President Steinbaum has listened, acknowledging the farmers’ demands recently in her daily morning press meetings, Las Mañaneras. On October 29th, her Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué, announced proposals to respond to the farmers, including a direct payment this year of 950 pesos per ton of corn sold for farmers with farms up to 20 hectares in size (~40 acres) and a subsidized line of credit. A third proposal from the Mexican government is for a long-term plan to stabilize farmer income by setting a guaranteed reference price for corn that producers, the government, and food processors would negotiate, and also a government-backed initiative to assist with commercialization. The devil will be in the details, as what that price will be is not clear.
To keep the government honest, many farmers have maintained their protests, especially because the one-time direct payment does not reach the producers’ original demand of 7200 pesos per ton of corn.
This ensemble of policies being debated now in Mexico is neither radical nor strange. In the United States, there was the counter-cyclical payment program from 2002-2007 for various commodities when prices fell below a certain threshold. Another, similar initiative was the non-recourse loan program, which first appeared during the Great Depression, which then reappeared in 2014. This program has the government purchase products from farmers to keep reserves, or stocks, when prices fall below a certain level. The problem in the United States is that the threshold prices in these programs for when the government steps in either to purchase product or offer payments is so low as to make little real difference for most farmers.
Farmers in the US could organize and demand a better floor price in such programs that would cover, at minimum, the cost of production for their goods, and perhaps a little more so that they earn a profit. Instead, too often farmers believe that they alone can fix their economic problems, engaging in overproduction, which actually drives prices even further down and often pushes them into environmentally destructive practices.
Also not strange is the idea that American farmers would take to the streets to demand change. Back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to DC to call for fair prices so that they could stay on the land, blocking streets and negotiating with lawmakers on potential policy options. These actions, while not securing significant changes at the time, did spur subsequent activism and movements to emerge in groups like Farm Aid.
Trump takes farmers’ support for granted. Look no further than how soy producers were treated during the China trade spat, as if they had no agency and were made into pawns. Mexican farmers show another way—one where farmers take control over their collective destiny, taking to the streets to call not just for improved economic returns, but dignity. Producers in the US should follow their lead, perhaps even join them. It's not just the Mexican countryside that needs saving, but the American one also needs rescuing.
The current administration seems content to let conditions for US farmers continue to decline, but our food producers shouldn't stand for it any longer.
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100+ Democrats Urge Trump to Improve US-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal
"We are united in our view that the agreement enacted in 2020 has failed to deliver improvements for American workers, family farmers, and communities nationwide."
Nov 03, 2025
A group of more than 100 congressional Democrats on Monday called on President Donald Trump to use the opportunity presented by the mandatory review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement "to make significant and necessary improvements to the pact" that will benefit American workers and families.
"In 2020, some of us supported USMCA, some opposed it, and some were not in Congress," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump led by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.). "Today, we are united in our view that the agreement enacted in 2020 has failed to deliver improvements for American workers, family farmers, and communities nationwide."
The USMCA replaced the highly controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was enacted during the administration of then-Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994 after being signed by former Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992. The more recent agreement contains a mandatory six-year review.
As the lawmakers' letter notes:
Since enactment of the USMCA, multinational corporations have continued to use the threat of offshoring as leverage wielded against workers standing up for dignity on the job and a share of the profits generated by their hard work—and far too often, enabled by our trade deals, companies have acted on these threats. The US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada has significantly increased, and surging USMCA imports have undermined American workers and farmers and firms in the auto, steel, aerospace, and other sectors. Under the current USMCA rules, this ongoing damage is likely to worsen: Since USMCA, Chinese companies have increased their investment in manufacturing in Mexico to skirt US trade enforcement sanctions against unfair Chinese imports of products like electric vehicles and to take advantage of Mexico’s duty-free access to the US consumer market under the USMCA.
These disappointing results contrast with your claims at the time of the USMCA’s launch, when you promised Americans that the pact would remedy the NAFTA trade deficit, bring “jobs pouring into the United States,” and be “an especially great victory for our farmers.”
Those farmers are facing numerous troubles, not least of which are devastating tariffs resulting from Trump's trade war with much of the world. In order to strengthen the USMCA to protect them and others, the lawmakers recommend measures including but not limited to boosting labor enforcement and stopping offshoring, building a real "Buy North American" supply chain, and standing up for family farmers.
"The USMCA must... be retooled to ensure it works for family farmers and rural communities," the letter states. "Under the 2020 USMCA, big agriculture corporations have raked in enormous profits while family farmers and working people in rural communities suffered."
"We believe that an agreement that includes the improvements that we note in this letter" will "ensure the USMCA delivers real benefits for American workers, farmers, and businesses, [and] can enjoy wide bipartisan support," the lawmakers concluded.
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Treasury Chief Bessent Says He's a 'Soybean Farmer' Who Has 'Felt the Pain' of Trump Tariffs
"Only a right-wing elitist would think that owning a bunch of farmland makes you a farmer," said one critic. "No, farming makes you a farmer, Scott. You’re an investor and landowner."
Oct 27, 2025
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—a large landowner and former hedge fund manager worth north of half a billion dollars—faced widespread derision Sunday after claiming that he's a soybean farmer who, like actual farmers, is suffering from President Donald Trump's tariff war.
Asked by ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz about the apparent contradiction between Trump's claim to care about American farmers and the pain inflicted upon them by his trade war—especially with China, which is boycotting US agricultural exports—Bessent said: "Well, Martha, I'm actually a soybean farmer. So... I have felt this pain, too."
Bessent then tried to blame China for slashing US soybean imports and "using American farmers, who are amongst President Trump's biggest supporters."
The treasury secretary also mentioned the double whammy of tariffs and this season's bumper soybean crop, which he said have created a "perfect storm."
After Trump slapped 30% tariffs on Chinese imports in May, Beijing retaliated with measures including stopping all purchases of US soybeans. Before the trade war, a quarter of the soybeans—the nation’s number one export crop—produced in the United States were exported to China. Trump’s tariffs mean American soybean growers can’t compete with countries like Brazil, the world’s leading producer and exporter of the staple crop and itself the target of a 50% US tariff.
Critics swiftly pounced on Bessent's comments, with one actual farmer pointing out on X that the centimillionaire "owns up to $25 million worth of corn and soybean farmland... and earns as much as $1 million a year in rental income from the land."
Some social media users sardonically shared an artificial intelligence-generated image of Bessent standing in a field wearing overalls. Others posted a photo of John Ravenel House, the historic Charleston mansion he sold earlier this year for $18.5 million plus $3 million for furniture and fixtures—reportedly the highest price ever in the South Carolina city.
Spencer Ross, an associate professor at the Lowell Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts, noted that Bessent "promised—and failed—to divest his "$25 million of rent-seeking soybean property."
"I cannot imagine another farmer considering [Bessent's investments] actively being a 'farmer,'" Ross added before referencing the last president who actually grew crops. "I'm fairly certain Jimmy Carter wouldn't."
Author and activist Tim Wise quipped on social media: "Only a right-wing elitist would think that owning a bunch of farmland makes you a farmer. No, farming makes you a farmer, Scott. You’re an investor and landowner."
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