New polling suggests farmers are growing increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration’s ag policies.
According to a farmer survey commissioned by Amato Advisors, 55% of respondents said federal policies have had a negative effect on their farming operations over the past year. Only 19% of those polled said current policies have helped them.
Potentially more alarming to the Trump administration is that 39% of respondents said they remain “persuadable” in the upcoming midterm elections. That means they are open to choosing a different party or not voting at all. Included in that number are 50% of farmers who say they either “always” or “usually” vote for Republican candidates.
In 2024, nearly 80% of rural America supported Donald Trump in the presidential election.
Each party has a trust problem
Still, the news is not much better for Democrats. Farmers were asked which party they trusted to deliver for them on a variety of issues including input costs, trade, health care, farm income, debt and labor. In every case, more than 4 in 10 respondents said they trusted neither party.
“Across the board, farmers feel like they’re not being heard in D.C.,” said Mike Amato, founder and principal of Amato Advisors, adding that the results show Trump’s policies in his second term have hit farmers directly in the wallet.
However, that doesn’t mean farmers will necessarily switch party affiliation. According to the survey, 73% of farmers said their elected officials understand the issues they face either “not very well” or “not at all.”
“I think in some ways, farmers feel alone and that there’s an opportunity for either party to demonstrate that they’re willing to carry the voices of farmers through how they take action in Washington, D.C.,” Amato said.
Despite their dismal assessment of lawmakers, 54% of the respondents said they are more motivated to vote in the current election cycle than the last one. Only 5% said they are less motivated.
Farmers feel pain of Iran war
Among the farmers who responded, 78% cited higher costs for machinery and inputs as top challenges their operations face. A whopping 94% of them said the war an Iran is impacting their farming operation by raising fertilizer and energy costs.
That sentiment has been reflected in other recent farmer surveys. According to the May 5 Purdue University Ag Economy Barometer, more than 65% or farmers said the Iran conflict will have either a “negative” or “very negative” impact on their farm’s net income. Less than 14% expected the war to have a positive impact.
Only 57% of those surveyed by Purdue in May said the country is headed in the right direction. That number was 75% just four months ago.
Michael Langemeier, director of the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture, said a decline of that magnitude over a short period of time is likely a reflection of farmers losing optimism about future expectations.
The decline in optimism, he added, may have been even worse if bridge payments and upticks in corn and soybean prices hadn’t come into play.
“You’ve got two positive things going on there that are kind of working against the input cost problem we’re having that’s even worse because of the Iran conflict,” Langmeier said.
Even more disconcerting to Langemeier is the correlation between farmer sentiment of current conditions compared to future expectations. In late 2024 and early 2025, future expectations were much higher following Trump’s return to office. The latest poll reveals that farmers are pessimistic about both the current state of agriculture and its future prospects.
“The current conditions aren’t great for crop producers, and that graph tells me they aren’t expecting things to turn around here anytime soon,” Langmeier said.