We Went to Arkansas. The Farm Crisis Will Shock You

[Farmer] Just say I was at all soybeans at $150 an acre loss. You're looking at $450,000 of loss. For just doing my job I'm paying an additional $450,000 instead of making anything.

I've never seen a crisis like this. Without intervention we're talking about generational loss of farmers. [Host] In the last year, farm bankruptcies here in Arkansas have nearly doubled. The story in the media is that’s because of Trump's trade war with China, and now that China has agreed to a deal, the crisis will pass. But that story is wrong. The tariffs are a problem, but think of it as being in a coffin and we're going to nail the lid shut. The tariffs are the final nail.

This crisis was here before he did the tariff thing. This is a crisis that’s been building for decades. Farmers here told us a bigger story. A handful of companies have built a global system in which they always win, and American farmers are lucky to break even — all supported by our tax dollars. [Farmer] They're just laundering tax money. None of it stays in the local community. [Host] And while our farmers are dependent on growing crops for countries like China,

we import more of our food than ever. [Analyst] The bigger story is we're very vulnerable to the whims of other countries. [Host] With thousands of farmers on the brink, we wanted to know: how did this happen? And if a deal with China won't save American farmers, what will?

[Farmer] We watch the markets every morning at 5:45. I get up and listen to Standard Grain, and Joe says, “It's 5:45 in the morning, and the markets are...” [Host] Scott Brown is a row crop farmer who grows corn, rice and soybeans. [Scott] I want to know what the price of soybeans is, how much we've exported this week. [Host] The price of soybeans hit a high of $17 a bushel three years ago, but this year it's down to $10. That means many farmers will operate at a loss, but not just for soybeans.

So for cotton, soy, corn, and rice the average loss per acre is $150 to $350 per acre. [Sam] Adam Chappell farms 2,400 acres about two hours from Scott.

In September, Adam and Scott attended a meeting called for farmers to speak to their federal representatives. [Newscaster] Hundreds of farmers from across the state came to voice their concerns about the current state of farming. [Adam] It was a three-day notice on this meeting. We went from having 15 to 20 people to over 500. We were in the start of harvest. For 500 farmers to get off the combines and go stand in a meeting’s a big deal. It was like a funeral in there.

This is generations of farms teetering on the brink. I’m in the worst shape right now that I’ve ever been in. Five of my customers have committed suicide. That's how serious that this is. [Adam] Without immediate government intervention, we're going to lose 30 to 40% of our farmers again this year. We lost 25 to 30% last year. [Sam] Farm debt is expected to reach $560 billion this year, a new record high. Facing pressure from farm states,

President Trump has promised a federal aid package for farmers. We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made. We're going to give it to our farmers. [Sam] Over the last eight years, the federal government has sent farmers over $130 billion in emergency aid. But when you follow where that money actually goes, it reveals who’s really profiting from this system, and why more bailouts won't fix it. So when I get an aid package, okay, that money will never come to me.

It comes straight through my hands into whoever I owe the money to. [Sam] When federal money is sent to farmers who have debts like Adam, Scott, and most small farmers, they quickly pass it on to the companies they borrowed from to buy the products they need to farm, like seed, fertilizer, and machinery. And the combined costs of those inputs have risen far faster than what farmers can sell their crops for on the market. Farmers pay three times higher on inputs than they did in the 1990s.

What has gotten us to this point is the mergers and consolidations of Ag input suppliers. In 2015, Monsanto and Bayer merged. They were competing against each another. And that was during Obama's administration. They didn't do a thing about that. They let it happen. They let it happen. When I started farming, we had five or six Arkansas-based seed companies.

[Adam] There's none. There's none. They're all owned by Bayer or Pioneer. [Sam] In the last forty years, thousands of seed companies have merged into three. Forty-six fertilizer firms have merged into four. And just two farm machinery companies dominate the markets for tractors and combines. [Adam] Just for easy numbers, say I'm going to make $500 an acre gross on an acre of whatever. Well those companies know that, and they will price their stuff up to like $490.

The lack of competition is the reason they can keep those prices inflated. And there's nothing we can do about it. [Sam] That ability to raise prices is a big part of why — while farmers are just breaking even — major input companies maintain steadily high profit margins. [Jim Cramer] I’m calling whatever the heck is happening in the world of agriculture a bull market of insane proportions. [Adam] They're going to push us up to the brink, and then when they tip us over the edge,

they're going to go to the taxpayer for the balance. Instead of lowering their prices and taking a cut in their margin, they're just laundering tax money.

This is it. That's the old elementary school. All the schools are closed now, but that's what's left of the elementary school.

High school is completely gone. They demolished it.

Had parts stores, restaurants. You know, even just in my lifetime we've lost a lot. This was a furniture store, bank.

When I was a kid, Cotton Plant probably had 15-or 1600 people in it.

The difference is, when I was a kid there was probably 40 or 50 farmers around here. Well now there's just like 4 or 5 of us left, and every time one of them goes out of business, that's less business for the parts store. That's less business for the restaurants. So every time consolidation happens, rural America dies a little bit more. [Sam] Since 1997, the U.S. has lost over 300,000 farms and now has fewer farms than ever in its history. In a functioning market,

farmers with high input costs could just raise their selling prices, but on the selling side, they're getting squeezed just as hard by their buyers: the companies that control the global grain trade. There's really about four big grain companies. [Sam] Ben Lilliston is a farm and trade policy analyst who’s looked at the influence of big grain companies like Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland. These four big grain companies control almost 80% of the market in the U.S.,

and in many regions of the country, there's only one or two of them. Farmers are relatively weak players in the system — price takers in economic terms — meaning they have to take the price that the grain company offers. [Adam] We cannot negotiate with a buyer like ADM or Cargill and say, “No, $10 isn't good enough. I’ll give you my soybeans for $12.” They'll just go, “Well, okay. Get out and go on then.” We have leverage against nobody. We are under monopoly rule on the input and output side.

[Sam] The global grain companies buy crops from farmers, often below cost, and turn them into processed food, animal feed, and biofuels. [Ben] They want as much product on the market as they possibly can get. They don't want any limitations, and they want to pay prices as cheap as they possibly can when they're buying corn or soy or whatever. For decades, they've lobbied for free trade deals that allow them to move crops across borders without cost, claiming this will benefit American farmers.

[Cargill CEO] We think trade, whether it be NAFTA or elsewhere, is a good thing. And the American agricultural economy has benefitted significantly since NAFTA was put in place. [Ben] It's been sold to farmers that we're going to control global markets, and this is going to lift prices for you and make it very profitable for you. Unfortunately, that hasn't actually worked. It's actually been a race to the bottom.

[Sam] American farmers now find themselves in competition with farmers in Argentina and Brazil to sell their soybeans. For many years, China was their biggest buyer, but since Trump's trade wars began, China has pivoted to South America. That's been bad for U.S. farmers but not for the global grain companies like Cargill, which is among the biggest agricultural exporters in Argentina and Brazil. [Ben] Their interest is very different than a national interest

like the United States, our interest, or even a community level interest. [Sam] So far, the Trump administration has not followed through this year with an aid package for farmers. But in October, Trump's Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, announced that the U.S. would extend a $40 billion financial lifeline to prop up Argentina and its government, led by Javier Milei. I mean we bailed out my competition. I mean, they're my competition.

And we sent taxpayer dollars to them like it was no big deal, and hurt my market. Milei is big buddies with our current administration. The biggest investors in Argentina are big buddies with Bessent. I mean they worked together for years. [Sam] Bessent, a former hedge-fund manager, owns thousands of acres of U.S. owns thousands of acres of U.S. farmland. from which he has earned around $1 million a year. [Martha Raddatz] China has been boycotting American soybeans.

Do you see a real light at the end of the tunnel there? Well, Martha, in case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain too. [Adam] When Trump and Scott Bessent say, “We're for the farmers, we love the farmers.” I'd say the same thing that my papa and everybody's always told me, “Don't listen to what they say. Watch what they do.” It's that simple. What have they done to help us at all?

[Sam] Trump’s Justice and Agriculture departments recently announced a joint investigation into high input costs and their relationship to corporate consolidation of the farm economy. But it's just the latest in over a decade of similar federal investigations that have failed to stop mergers or break up existing monopolies. [Scott] The first thing we need to address is no competition. Because when there's no competition, I have no option,

and I have to take whatever these people are willing to give me. If the Trump administration responds to this crisis with another toothless antitrust investigation, another farm bailout, and another band-aid deal with China, nothing will fundamentally change for American farmers. We're probably going to have to break up those companies. And I think that's the larger story: is this really a resilient farm system, or should we be thinking differently about

maybe not overproducing so much for export and start to think about producing more food that Americans actually eat and diversifying what people produce. We used to have more of a supply management system, but we've gotten rid of that. Supply management is the name for policies that establish price floors for important crops, so that farmers don't have to fear operating at a loss year after year. Give us a price floor, which makes us performance-based.

So if you guarantee me $12.50 a bushel for my beans, it cost $11.50 to raise them. You've guaranteed me a dollar of profit on the bushels, right? Then it's on me to go do the work. I go make the bushels, so that I increase my profit. Would that not make more sense? Would that not kind of end the bailout program if you had a floor. [Sam] But the big ag companies hate this. [Scott] No, because they want us beholden to them. [Ben] Cargill and ADM is forced to pay farmers fairly

in the market versus taxpayers having to subsidize. [Sam] One study found that a supply management system could have saved taxpayers nearly $100 billion in farm aid payments over two decades. Instead, that money largely flowed through farmers to some of the world's largest corporations. We need to think about what's best for farmers, what's best for rural communities, the workers in the system, and consumers. And right now we have a system that’s what's best for global grain companies,

global meat companies, and the input suppliers.