With a rally in Wichita, Kansas yesterday, President Trump announced his new $8 billion “Harvest Fuel Relief” directive, promising to give a one-time payment to farmers in November meant to defray the impossibly high diesel and other operations costs now slamming farms and ranches as a result of the war Trump and Israel started in February and have continued for months. Even before that, agriculture production was in trouble.
“This is a fake out, not a bail out,” one Easterner called it, with less printable comments coming from the Farm Belt. “A band-aid response” was the polite description by the Iowa Farmers Union’s Aaron Lehman, reported the Iowa Capital Dispatch. Trump visits Iowa Thursday. Lehman said, “Farmers never should have been put in this position. A Band-Aid response now, two weeks before the election, doesn’t fit the problem.” Kansas Farmers Union spokesman Nick Levendofsky today warned of conditions for a mass exit by family farmers from these uncertain and impossible conditions.
Not only diesel prices are way up; all fertilizers, seeds, crop-defense chemicals—everything. In Kansas in September, the diesel price hit $6.23 a gallon as the harvest season began, up from $3.50 a gallon before the Iran war.
However, it is an irony, if not an insult, that Trump announced his “Harvest” Relief in Kansas, which is the lead state facing a planting crisis right now, not just a harvest crisis. Kansas, the top wheat state in the nation, accounts for nearly 20% of U.S. output. Kansas grows Winter wheat (planted in the Fall, dormant over Winter, and harvested next June), which is planted now until mid-November. Hundreds of Kansas wheat growers say, it’s not worth paying to put the crop in the ground this year. The “Harvest Fuel Relief” is a dead letter.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said yesterday that it will model the expected 2026 crop losses, apply the result for each applicant, then make pay-outs according to a formula for commodities in “Title 1” (common row crops and dairy, e.g., corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, etc.), but growers of specialty crops, fishermen, and others not covered, are “encouraged to provide data related to increase fuel costs” for future “consideration” by the USDA. The pay-outs are to start next month.
American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall said, ultra-politely, “We look forward to working with the president and USDA to ensure specialty crop growers, livestock producers, fishermen and others get the support they need….”
In effect, the “Harvest Fuel Relief” is in the same dud category for impact as the Oct. 5 Trump executive order, announced at his rally in Nebraska, to temporarily suspend Federal taxes on diesel and allow wider use of tax-free farm-use diesel (red-dyed). Some truckers report saving a whopping $10 a day, and will face deferred taxes in a few months.