Missouri farmers are going bankrupt under the same old US farm policy | Opinion
By Tim Gibbons Special to The Kansas City Star
July 22, 2026
Farm bankruptcies rose for a second year running in 2025. Missouri outpaced much of the country, with a 167% leap from the previous year. One thing is obvious from this alarming trend: Washington isn’t listening to farm country.
While Congress debates the farm bill, the conversation has narrowed almost entirely to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That debate does matter as we need a robust sustainable safety net program as people have a right to food and to help feed the most vulnerable in our country. Food insecurity in the richest country in the world is a national disgrace. But it sidesteps an urgent question: Why are so many families, including food producers and the communities they serve, relying on food assistance in the first place? The answer is a farm and food crisis that has been building for decades.
Unable to stay afloat, farmers are going out of business, hitting a six-year high in April. As farm income continues to fall — frequently dropping below the cost of production — prices for inputs such as fertilizer skyrocket. Even in the face of crisis, our elected representatives insist on rehashing the same tired, out-of-touch policies that got us here. What gives?
This isn’t just a farm problem. Our economies rise and fall with family farms. When farmers struggle, local businesses close, tax bases erode and entire communities are hollowed out.
The roots of this crisis run deep, spurred on by the corporate capture of our institutions and the erosion of our democratic process. Monopolized and globalized markets, trade disputes, policies promoting chronic overproduction and low prices, unchecked corporate consolidation of livestock markets and record high consumer prices have all made farming an untenable livelihood for most. Corporate lobbyists wrote the rules that built this system — and families, rural and urban, have been paying the price ever since.
The administration has responded with limited emergency direct payments, but these Band-Aids won’t stop the hemorrhaging caused by the structural policies that drive rural America’s decline. And, instead of providing sensible solutions, the Senate and House farm bills double down on the same pro-corporate, extractive policies that created this crisis.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and it’s not inevitable. Crony capitalist policies are the cause. Democratic policies that center the people most impacted are the solution.
Families, not corporate agribusiness billionaires
A family farm system — genuinely independent, diversified, locally rooted and centered on the principle of economic justice and parity for those who feed us — remains the most effective model for producing safe, high-quality food, sustaining rural economies and protecting our soil and water for future generations. Restoring that system requires more than emergency payments. It requires structural reform and the courage of conviction. We need our elected representatives in Congress to step up and stop bowing to corporate agribusiness and billionaires.
Congress should pass a farm bill that:
- Restores supply management, grain reserves and price floors set at cost of production plus a fair profit margin.
- Prioritizes farm income earned through fair, open and competitive markets — not government subsidy dependence.
- Stops multinational corporate ownership of agricultural assets through the Farmland for Farmers Act.
- Strengthens and enforces antitrust laws against concentration and vertical integration throughout the food supply chain.
- Ensure dairy farmers a fair price for their product while protecting costs for consumers and revitalizing rural areas through the Milk from Family Dairies Act.
- Improving access and accountability for loan services offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency through the Fair Credit for Farmers Act.
- Redirects taxpayer dollars away from corporate factory farms and toward independent family farm livestock producers practicing genuine land stewardship.
- Incentivizes and supports land access for beginning farmers.
- Addresses the existential threat of global climate change through policies that promote reasonable production, agroecology and conservation.
- Supports the right to food for all people, including robust safety net programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
We can do better — for farmers, for rural communities, for consumers and for the country. Our elected representatives need to govern for the people who actually live and work out here, not for the corporations and lobbyists who fund their campaigns.
It’s time that Congress makes policies that are reflective and responsive to what is happening out here in farm country and rural America, not the same tired, disastrous policies that got us where we are today. We’ve been patient long enough.
Tim Gibbons is executive director of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit National Family Farm Coalition.