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For most of 2024, there was not a clear choice regarding which agricultural issue or event would emerge as the most consequential. A case could be made for any number of hot button topics. But late in the year that all changed. And weighed against those that didn’t quite make the cut, it really isn’t all that close. Let’s review several worthy contenders.

The farm economy

Most people’s understanding of farm economy issues revolves around the price of groceries. There’s a misplaced assumption that if the retail price of food – for instance eggs – is exorbitantly high, blame greedy poultry companies and/or “inflation.” But that’s simplistic. Farm economy issues are far more complicated than the price of eggs. In 2024, almost every segment of the agricultural economy took it on the chin – including farmers, Big Ag, ag equipment manufacturers, and seed and agricultural chemical companies. Here’s a sample:

Farmers‘ pocketbooks 

Don’t suggest farmers are somehow getting rich off higher grocery bills. Quite the contrary.  2024 will most assuredly go down as a stinker. USDA projects year-over-year net farm income will fall $9.5 billion, 6.3% lower than 2023. Net cash farm income is expected to decrease $5.7 billion or 3.5% lower than last year. The numbers would be bleaker if not for an improving livestock sector.

Corn and soybean farmers will be especially hard hit. Corn receipts are projected to fall almost 21% from 2023 – a loss of $16.6 billion. Soybean receipts are projected to fall $6.9 billion, a 12.3% decline from last year.

Tractor manufacturers 

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if farmers don’t have disposable income, they aren’t buying new farm equipment. The Association of Equipment Manufactures reports year-over-year sales of tractors is down 14.2%. It’s worse for combines with sales plummeting 34.6%.

Big ag

The nation’s largest agricultural companies were also not immune to the sluggish 2024 farm economy, often finding themselves pressured to make internal adjustments to a shrinking bottom line. Here are a couple of headlines:

Farmers in particular may need additional financial assistance from the incoming Trump administration, especially if a tariff war reignites with China and other agricultural commodity importing nations.

Extreme weather events

It is an iron-clad fact that the decades-long pollution of Earth’s atmosphere from greenhouse gasses (most notably carbon dioxide and methane) has increased both the intensity and quantity of extreme weather events – those with a billion dollar price tag – across the globe.

NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information reports a jaw dropping 400 separate U.S. weather and climate disaster events between 1980 and Nov. 1 with combined losses exceeding $2.785 trillion dollars.

Thus far in 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has identified 24 confirmed weather and climate disaster events – yes 24, resulting in the deaths of 418 people and each event with losses of more than a billion bucks.

NOAA also reports the past five years have seen a significant increase in events in adjusted consumer price index dollars.

Among the 2024 U.S. weather events so far were 17 severe storms, 4 tropical cyclones, 2 winter storms and a wildfire. Nor was the rest of the world immune.

There are concerns regarding the 2025 U.S. planting season due to drought conditions that persist over much of the U.S.

Adding to the uncertainty is what role a Trump administration might play in mitigating losses over the next four years.

Which takes us to the 2024 runner up.

Hasta la vista, Chevron defense

Ever since the1984 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the courts have generally deferred to federal agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous Congressional laws as long as that interpretation is reasonable. In that Chevron majority opinion, Justice Paul Stevens wrote:

 “Sometimes the legislative delegation to an agency on a particular question is implicit rather than explicit. In such a case, a court may not substitute its own construction of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrator of an agency.”

The implication in Chevron was that Congressional lawmaking could not foresee every possible contingency, often in complex laws that federal agencies are better equipped to tweak and fine tune.

But such federal oversight was wiped away this past summer when the high court reversed Chevron in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

The day the Supreme Court granted certiorari, it was a forgone conclusion that the Chevron Deference was living on borrowed time. The court had already shown disdain and mistrust for the executive branch of government and a desire to inject itself in federal agency day-to-day operations.

Loper Bright Enterprises not only neutered Chevron, but gave judges the power to be the sole interpreter of what a law means, furthering their role in policymaking.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear regarding the pecking order:

“A statutory ambiguity does not necessarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a court, resolve the resulting interpretive question. Many or perhaps most statutory ambiguities may be unintentional. And when courts confront statutory ambiguities in cases that do not involve agency in interpretations or delegations of authority, they are not somehow relieved of their obligation to independently interpret the statutes. Instead of declaring a particular party’s reading ‘permissible’ in such a case, courts use every tool at their disposal to determine the best reading of the statute and resolve the ambiguity. But in an agency case as in any other, there is a best reading all the same — ‘the reading the court would have reached’ if no agency were involved. It therefore makes no sense to speak of a ‘permissible’ interpretation that is not the one the court, after applying all relevant interpretive tools, concludes is best.”

Loper Bright Enterprises is a monumental change for every industry including agriculture. All existing USDA, FDA and EPA laws will be subject to intense scrutiny. And Congress will need to become much more specific in lawmaking.

Which means, the winner for most consequential agricultural story of 2024 is…

The ‘Ag-ruptor’ in Chief

Until last month, one could probably throw all the consequential 2024 agricultural issues into a bag, shake it up, and pull out a winner. That all changed on Nov. 5 when the electorate decided to return Donald Trump to the White House. For good measure, voters – by narrow margins –  gave the GOP control of the House and Senate. The entire U.S. agricultural infrastructure, from individual family farmers to CEOs of multi-billion dollar Big Ag corporations, are on edge wondering how Trump might upend their lives.

And with good reason.  Trump has already signaled changes are in the wind.

Tariffs 

Lest we forget, in July 2018 Trump started a trade war with China and other nations placing 25% tariffs on roughly $34 billion dollars of Chinese imports. China wasted no time in retaliating, by imposing 25% duties worth $34 billion on more than 500 goods including agricultural products – most notably soybeans.

Between 2017 and 2018 China imports of U.S. agricultural commodities fell 63%, a loss of $9.9 billion dollars.

And the effect of the tit-for tat trade war? In 2019, there were 595 family farm bankruptcies, the most since 2011. And the U.S. agricultural sector experienced record high debt of $416 billion.

Things were so bad that Trump, facing a looming re-election campaign, green lighted $16 billion in farm subsidy payments due to the trade war. Another $16 billion in farmer payouts followed in 2020.

But it was Big Ag and not the family farmer that most benefited. Two-thirds of subsidy payments went corporations at the top 10% of ag producers

By the time Trump left the White House, U.S tariffs on all Chinese products reached $550 billion.

Now Trump appears eager to renew tariffs on China as well as slap tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Immigration:

Trump likely won the 2024 election on a small handful of issues. But undeniably at the top is undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump has threatened to deport millions of undocumented workers over the next four years.  And immigration hawks are already pushing hard for Trump to eliminate the H-2A visa program, which provides a large portion of legal agricultural workers.
The Trump administration previously supported H-2A visas. Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would place significant stress on H-2A visa processing and could have unintended consequences on oversight and bottle jams on non-agricultural H-2A visas.
The Center for Migration Studies estimates there are 283,000 undocumented immigrants working in U.S. agriculture – roughly 45% of the total foreign workforce.
Large-scale deportation of undocumented immigrants would be felt by U.S. consumers. U.S. farm groups are pressing Trump for exemptions, but thus far it’s radio silence.

Chaos

Trump’s first term careened from one agricultural concern to another, often leaving dysfunction in its wake. The ‘Ag-rupter’ in Chief:

  1. Neutered the work of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service by moving the workforce from Washington, D.C., to the Kansas City area.
  2. Withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement.
  3. Endangered meat workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  5. Weakened oversight of Big Meat, again to the detriment of the individual farmer, by placing the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration under the control of Agricultural Marketing Service.
  6. Revoked Obama administration rules protecting livestock producers from exploitation.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation wants Trump to do more of the same, which if realized, would have severe consequences on U.S.a. In its 920-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” (Project 2025), the Heritage Foundation recommends to: 

  1. repeal of Agricultural Risk and Price Loss Coverage programs; 
  2. increase premiums for farmers to receive federal crop insurance; 
  3. move oversight of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, and a host of other food service programs from USDA to the Department of Health and Human Services; 
  4. repeal the federal sugar program;  
  5. eliminate the Conservation Reserve Program; and 
  6. eliminate U.S. dietary guideline reform.

It’s guaranteed Trump will waste little time making some agricultural changes – withdrawing again from the Paris Climate Agreement comes to mind.  And there could be significant changes to the U.S. Mexico, Canada Agreement when it is up for renewal talks in 2026.

As for the rest of it, who knows. I would say that given the number of issues the GOP would like to address in a two-year window until the 2026 midterms, it is very likely that the delayed Farm Bill will become the instrument for far-right leaning Republicans to advance the Heritage Foundation agenda.

Uncertainty next year is sure to reign supreme, which makes the 2024 fall election the top agricultural story of the year.

The post Opinion: Care to guess which is the top ag story of the year? appeared first on Investigate Midwest.