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Farmers across the country have felt the effect of President Trump's policies over the past year. Trump himself conceded, many farmers would feel short-term pain as he shakes up American trade policies with tariffs and other measures. The White House says 2026 will be better for them. NPR's Kirk Siegler took a road trip across South Dakota farm country as part of NPR's American Voices series to check in.
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KIRK SIEGLER: 2025 was another unprofitable harvest in the heartland, where soybean farmers were already dealing with high equipment and fertilizer costs due to inflation and tariffs.
KEVIN DEINERT: Parking brake on.
SIEGLER: Kevin Deinert farms the same land his great-great-grandfather did near Mitchell, South Dakota, about 80 miles from the Iowa state line.
DEINERT: Yeah. You know, a lot of generations. I consider I'd be probably the fifth generation. I got sons. That'd be the sixth that possibly will want to take over the farm.
SIEGLER: Lately, it's just a fight to stay in business one year to the next. Never mind legacies. Deinert is 38 in a thick, worn hoodie, his brown hair cut short. He climbs out of his tractor and onto the slush in front of two four-story-high grain bins.
DEINERT: Get rid of some of the ice.
SIEGLER: They're still full of soybeans. Deinert is hoping to store them a few more months, hang on until maybe prices go up and there's a new trade deal with China - historically, the Dakotas' biggest buyer.
DEINERT: We haven't seen anything in writing. And until we do, it's hard to get overly excited. We're optimistic.
SIEGLER: The White House says China agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans this year and about double that next year, which would be roughly what they bought from here before Trump's trade war. So was this all even worth it? Deinert isn't eager to answer that.
DEINERT: No, I understand why they did it and how they did it. It's unfortunate that usually the American farmer, and specifically the soybean farmer, is used on the tip of the spear.
SIEGLER: Farmers as negotiating chips. The heartland states went big for Trump. In 2024, he racked up bigger gains in rural counties than in his two previous runs. Trump's recent $12 billion aid package to farmers reeling from his trade war is billed as a bridge payment to buy more time for negotiations.
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SIEGLER: His agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, insists farmers will get the certainty they've been asking for in the coming weeks so they can go to their banker and get loans. John Kippley says farmers needed the money yesterday.
JOHN KIPPLEY: You can't take that to the bank and tell them that you're going to get this bridge payment. And they'll ask you how much? Nobody knows.
SIEGLER: Kippley runs a tax firm in the town of Aberdeen. Many of his clients went to harvest in the red this year, and bankers are now telling some to sell out. The government lending firm Farmer Mac predicts more than half of farmers won't turn a profit next year.
KIPPLEY: If they don't have a dad or a grandpa or an uncle that's got everything paid for to work with you, you're most likely not going to be able to stay farming.
SIEGLER: Kippley is 80. His farm just barely made it through the crash of the 1980s, which caused huge rural flight. People are worried 2026 could bring another bust, maybe worse, with ripple effects like more small-town hospitals and schools closing.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the 110th annual South Dakota Farmers Union Convention.
SIEGLER: This anxiety was palpable at the Crossroads Hotel in Huron. The next speaker at the podium was Governor Larry Rhoden, who took over when Kristi Noem became Homeland Security secretary. He tried to reassure the crowd, saying Trump's Cabinet, especially Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, gets farmers and what they're going through.
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LARRY RHODEN: Brooke understands the implications of some of the unfortunate things that can come out of their boss's mouth.
SIEGLER: That got some chuckles and head nods. Farmers unions historically have leaned Democrat. But even more conservative groups like the Farm Bureau have called the $12 billion aid package a good first step, with praise for Trump more muted than usual. South Dakota Farmers Union president Doug Sombke isn't sure what the endgame is.
DOUG SOMBKE: I mean, he's back at the fire trying to put it out with a garden hose. And it's an inferno.
SIEGLER: Sombke says the tariffs are just compounding problems that have been building since the farm economy crash in the '80s. Those who stayed in business were told to get big and export to survive. So it's hard to get back to just growing for America like Trump said he wants.
SOMBKE: And I think this time it's even going to be worse for the simple fact that farmers today have so much leverage. I mean, they're - the borrowing amount that they have to - I mean, it's not just tens of thousands anymore. There's just hundreds of thousands and somewhere in the millions.
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SIEGLER: An early-season blizzard is whipping a brutal wind across the prairie, which can feel bleak, especially this time of year when daylight is so precious. Country highways weave through farms. The occasional abandoned homestead stands eerily in the frozen stubble of cornfields. Finally, 150 miles later, the massive Missouri River and the unofficial line where the row crops of the lush Midwest start to give way to the rangeland of the arid West.
KORY BIERLE: The old rule was always the 100th meridian, the 100th through the 101st meridian.
SIEGLER: Yeah.
BIERLE: And you...
SIEGLER: So I just crossed it?
BIERLE: You did. Yep.
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SIEGLER: This is cattle country near the town of Midland. Kory Bierle's family has ranched here along the rugged, shale-carved banks of the Bad River for more than a century.
BIERLE: It's a bad river because - Wakpa-Sica is what the Lakota and the natives called it. It floods so easily.
SIEGLER: There are a lot of headwinds in the ag economy right now, but Bierle, who's 60, still has hope going into 2026. He recounts fondly a story he heard from another rancher who visited the White House for a ceremony. A staffer asked them to hang back because the president wanted to meet them after.
BIERLE: And Trump brought them - brought the cowboys back in, ranchers back in and said, these guys, these guys are what make America great.
SIEGLER: Bierle is also optimistic because high beef prices are one of the few bright spots in the farm economy right now. Ranchers are getting a reprieve after years of drought and the pandemic.
BIERLE: Yeah. We're not partying yet, but, you know, you feel for them because, at the same time, we know exactly what it's like.
SIEGLER: He's finally got enough money coming in to pay off some debts, but he'll keep budgeting conservatively.
BIERLE: Especially equipment costs. You know, there's a reason I'm driving a 2012 old pickup. They're just - they're so dang expensive.
SIEGLER: He won't expand his cattle herd anytime soon, though. He says it feels like there's always another shock no one sees coming, that black swan event just around the next bend.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Midland, South Dakota.
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