GALT, Iowa — Two days after President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran, Iowa farmer Mark Mueller got a worrying message from a supplier: The price of his fertilizer had jumped from $795 per ton to $850.
The war had shut down the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting shipments of the fertilizer, which is the biggest expense on Mueller’s corn and soybean farm in northeast Iowa. He hopes one day to pass the asset to his two adult daughters so they will have some “security in their old age.” On March 6, the supplier called again: Now the price was $950 a ton. Two weeks later, the price jumped to $1,050, nearly one-third higher than when the war began.
“Scary,” said Steve Rehder, 62, a family farmer in northwest Iowa, when he was asked to assess the overall farm economy.
“Volatile,” said Jason Orr, a farmer in northeastern Iowa who serves on the state’s Corn Promotion Board, when he was asked the question.
“Miserable,” said Lance Lillibridge, 56, who farms corn and raises cattle in eastern Iowa.
Farmers like these have long been a pillar of Trump’s electoral base. When he won re-election in 2024, he carried the rural vote by 40 percentage points, surpassing his margin in his previous two elections.
Trump isn’t on the ballot, but he has a lot to lose if his party falters in the midterm congressional elections in November. Democrats must net four seats to retake control of the Senate, and Iowa has become a battleground. Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is retiring, giving Democrats a shot at a pickup.
Interviews with 13 Iowa farmers in the last week show that they’re burdened by rising costs, along with fluctuating prices they can’t control. Eleven voted for Trump in past elections. Mueller describes himself as a “pro-business Republican” and declined to say whether he backed Trump.
Stu Swanson, who raises corn and soybeans in Galt, said he voted for Trump in the first two general elections and wrote in former Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s name in 2024.
Most said they have faith in Trump and his judgment but worry that operating margins are so tight that they’re hovering precariously between profitability and ruin.
A new combine or tractor can cost up to $1 million. Repair costs have climbed. Trump’s on-again, off-again trade wars are a source of uncertainty that makes it tough to plan.
What’s more, they’ve seen fellow farmers go bankrupt or take their own lives, an alarming trend that mental health experts have been tracking for years. Back in 2021, the last year data was available, farmers were 3 ½ times likelier to die by suicide than the general population, according to David Brown, a behavior health state specialist at Iowa State University.
“Their whole life is dependent on that farm and keeping it in the family for future generations,” he said in an interview. “Financially, as there’s more risk of losing the farm, we’ll have more risk of suicide deaths.”
Many of the obstacles farmers confront have been decades in the making, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations. Unprompted, some of the farmers derided the last two Democratic presidents, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. But they acknowledged that financial pressures persist.
“I know of five farmers across this state that have taken their lives since last fall,” Orr said. “I would assume that finances play a part in that. Being on the board, I talk to a lot of farmers from across the state, and the mental health of a lot of farmers is not good. Hell, our own at times isn’t good. It’s scary.”
Swanson said: “We are at a challenge. A lot of the decisions we make historically are because of that next generation. But I’m afraid we’re in a situation where this generation has to survive.”
Recent polling captures some of the queasiness farmers are feeling. A Fox News survey this month found that 68% of white rural voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared with 32% who approved. Back in January, white rural voters approved of his economic stewardship by 52%-47%.
In a prepared statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “Farmers suffered for years under Joe Biden, who increased the United States’ trade deficit to over $1.2 trillion, raised input costs, and pushed woke DEI agricultural policies. In contrast, President Trump is helping our agriculture industry by negotiating new trade deals, lowering input costs, bolstering the farm safety net, doubling the death tax exemption, ending taxes on rural property loan interest, creating rural opportunity zones, and more.”
Trump cultivated farmers in both of his terms, doling out direct aid and trying to reset relations with nations that buy their crops, namely China. He is quick to remind farmers of what he describes as his largesse.
He invited hundreds of farmers and ranchers to the White House in March. Speaking from a balcony, with a gold tractor below him, he assured the gathering that they “once again have a true friend and champion in the Oval Office.”
He mentioned a bill he signed last year that allows farmers to write off 100% of the cost of new equipment, along with a financial aid package meant to help them weather tough economic times.
“I just gave you $12 billion,” he said.
“You think Biden would have done that?” he said.
Mueller was at the event that day, invited as president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. He said that when he left the White House grounds, he overheard some ironic comments from farmers that surprised him, like: “Funny, I kind of remember making money during the Biden administration.”
Chad Hart, a crop market specialist at Iowa State University, said that 2021 and 2022, the first half of Biden’s term, were “some of the best years U.S. agriculture has seen in terms of net farm income.”
Most of the Iowa farmers who spoke to NBC News don’t regret supporting Trump. When he speaks, he’s unfiltered and raw and sounds nothing like a more conventional politician, they said. That’s what they like about him.
“He tells it the way it is,” said Rehder, who voted for Trump in all three presidential elections. “You may not like it, and you might not agree with it, but he tells it the way he wants it. I’m not saying I agree with him all the time, but he don’t beat around the bush.”
Still, the $12 billion payment is a sore point. Government subsidies won’t solve the systemic problems farmers face, nor will the quick cash make much difference in the end, they said. If anything, the money makes it tougher to negotiate better deals with suppliers, who are well aware that the farmers just got a government check and want a piece of it.
“I look at these programs where the government keeps wanting to write farmers checks, and to me, this is more medicine that’s making us sick,” said Elliott Henderson, who farms in northeast Iowa. “I’ve got 10 people standing in line who think that dollar is theirs, whether it’s the equipment manufacturer selling me more parts for my tractors or the seed guy or my landlords. I never get to keep that money.”
Swanson said: “Unfortunately, the way we’ve been able to kind of survive is through the use of government payments, and that is not the way farmers want to operate. We want to find our income from the marketplace, and that means we need domestic markets, we need export markets, we need new technologies.”
However bleak the marketplace may seem, many of the farmers said they aren’t about to turn on Trump. Yet some aren’t certain his agriculture policies will succeed.
Has Trump’s presidency been good for farmers? NBC News asked Orr, who also voted for Trump all three times.
He paused for a few seconds.
“The jury is still out on that one,” he said, sitting amid the tractors and tools in his farm shed.
“He started something in his first presidency that didn’t get finished. And I hope to God that he follows through by the time this one is over with,” Orr added.
Apart from fertilizer, the Iran war raised the cost of another crucial farming expense: diesel fuel. Diesel powers the tractors and machinery used to plant and harvest crops.
Corey Winterfeld, whose family farms corn and soybeans on more than 5,500 acres in northwest Iowa, estimates that the operation burns through 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day during two months of harvest season.
Since the war with Iran started, the price of diesel has jumped from $3.75 per gallon to more than $5.50.
Trump has said fuel prices will fall once the war ends, but the farmers are skeptical that the drop will happen anytime soon.
“Like other inputs we buy, it goes up fast and comes down slow,” Swanson said.
In justifying the war, Trump said he’s focused on denying Iran a nuclear weapon, a goal that outweighs all other considerations, including Americans’ financial condition.
“Not even a little bit,” Trump said when a reporter asked whether people’s finances were driving him to reach a deal with Iran.
Democrats have seized on Trump’s comment to make the case that he is out of touch. Most of the farmers didn’t take offense.
“We know Trump well enough to know that he sometimes says things off the top of his head and doesn’t think them through,” Arda Van Regenmorter said at her family’s farm in northwest Iowa. “That statement, to me, is one of those. He cares about us financially.”
Trump returned from a two-day summit meeting in China this month with an announcement that Beijing would buy more than $17 billion of U.S. agricultural products through 2028, a potential boon for farmers.
The question is whether China will deliver. A study by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute of International Economics looked at what was billed as a “phase one” trade deal Trump reached with China toward the end of his first term. China had pledged to buy an additional $32 billion in U.S. agricultural products in 2020-21, but wound up buying about 83% of its commitment, the study showed.
Returning to office last year, Trump slapped new tariffs on China, resulting in retaliatory duties that caused U.S. agricultural exports to plummet last year, according to a report from North Dakota State University.
Tit-for-tat tariffs cut U.S. farm exports to China by nearly $15 billion from March 2025 to February, the report showed.
Trusting in Trump, some of the farmers commended him for at least trying to upend a trade relationship they believe favored China over the U.S. They’re willing to give him time to see whether his methods pay off.
“It’s going to get ugly for a while, but in the long run, it’s going to help us,” said Loren Van Regenmorter, Arda’s husband. “Trump is the first president we’ve had in a long time that will stand up to China, because China just runs all over us.”
The Van Regenmorters face a dilemma. Loren is 69; Arda is 67. At some point, they’ll need to pass the approximately 6,000-acre farming operation to the next generation. Their son, Travis, spent 12 years working on the farm but left for a job at John Deere. Stress was one reason for the career move, Travis said.
Arda said of her son’s decision: “It makes me sad, but I want him to be happy. What’s going to happen in the future? We have no one to hand it down to. Maybe grandsons, but it’s to the point where — do we want them to farm?”
So, what is the farm’s fate?
“That’s what we don’t know. We don’t know,” Loren said.
“We’re waiting to see how God has this planned out for us,” Arda said. “We’re not giving up. I truly believe he’ll put someone in our life.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 or go to 988lifeline.org to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. For more, the USDA offers farm stress and mental health resources here.
