The farm crisis

If you haven’t figured it out yet, we have a farming crisis.

We’ve had a farming crisis for years, and the Band-Aids and shortcuts and starts and stops and handouts and bridge payments at the federal level haven’t been enough. We seem incapable of solving this problem, which has been exacerbated by higher input costs (in large part caused by the wars in Ukraine and Iran), closed markets due to tariffs and trade policies, and low commodity prices compounded by the lack of new federal farm policy.

Farming is the backbone of the Arkansas economy, certainly throughout eastern and northeastern Arkansas. We also know it is critically important from a national security standpoint. We’ve read a lot of rhetoric from our elected officials, and there have been plenty of promises made about help being on the way.

In mid-June, we reached a breaking point.

Riceland Foods announced it will temporarily close nine of its 23 rice drying facilities this harvest season, citing rice acreage levels not seen since the 1970s. The facilities are in Lonoke, Des Arc, Dumas, Fair Oaks, Griffithville, Knobel, Parkin and Tuckerman, as well as Dudley, Mo.

Rice production has long served as a cornerstone of the local economies in these communities, supporting farmers, truckers, equipment operators, seasonal workers and businesses that rely on harvest-related activity.

“Since rice acres have fallen to levels we haven’t seen since the 1970s, we’ve been forced to temporarily close a portion of our dryer network,” said Ashten Adamson, Riceland’s vice president of marketing and communications. “We’re weathering as best we can, trying to make plans, and this is part of the plan.”

Arkansas typically plants between 1.2 million and 1.4 million acres of rice annually. This year, however, industry leaders project acreage could fall to as little as 800,000 acres, a reduction approaching 40%. The dramatic decline is being blamed on a combination of historically low rice prices, rising production costs, and challenges in global markets.

Arkansas led the entire country in Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies last year with 33 filings, more than double the previous year. A Chapter 12 bankruptcy filing allows farmers to restructure debts in order to avoid losing a farm. Most observers expect the numbers to be worse this year.

Days after the Riceland Foods announcement, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced that the Senate’s version of the Farm Bill was ready for debate in that chamber.

The Agriculture Act of 2026, also known as Farm Bill 2.0, incorporates more than 100 bipartisan bills and priorities. 

The new bill provides support for farmers facing revenue losses due to factors outside of their control. It increases Farm Service Agency guaranteed operating loan limits to $3 million and guaranteed ownership loans to $3.5 million. Direct operating loan limits would increase to $750,000, direct ownership loans would increase to $850,000, and micro loans would increase to $100,000. Boozman said previous loan limits were based on the 2018 Farm Bill, which was based on 2012 data.

It also is designed to increase trade by more than doubling funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development Program. It also increases international food assistance efforts, which you may recall were cut severely early in President Donald Trump’s second term last year. Congress, including many of our elected Arkansas officials, went along with the cuts citing waste and fraud in the system.

One issue not addressed in Boozman’s bill is a bridge payment program to help struggling farmers survive until the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage enhancements take effect later this year. Boozman thinks the better place would be a supplemental appropriations bill that would include Trump’s military spending request as well as disaster relief spending.

Boozman expressed confidence that his committee could pass the bill when the Senate meets in Washington in July before it breaks in August. 

The House has a different bill. U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Jonesboro, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, has told me before he thinks the House and Senate versions of this Farm Bill could be ironed out and ready to roll around the Labor Day break.

Now that you have all this background, let me circle back to my frustration on this situation. We know what needs to be done — it’s laid out in the bills. 

We know that time is not on our side — yet Boozman and Crawford still point to action that is months away. Why not sooner?

This is a solvable problem, but it requires action … immediately. Congress and the president are capable of keeping more farmers from financial ruin. In 2008, we moved within days to keep the banking system from collapse. We are at a similar flashpoint in our nation’s history. 

I hope that our federal delegation is calling the White House as well as asking House and Senate leadership daily to convene the right decision-makers in the room to act now, not later.

If Riceland Foods isn’t a big enough wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

Editor’s note: Roby Brock is the editor-in-chief of Talk Business & Politics. He hosts “Talk Business & Politics” and “Capitol View” and a radio program three times a week on KASU.