Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
"The Agricultural Economy: Congress Can’t Wait”
Monday, October 6, 2025
There is a not-so-perfect storm brewing for farmers in my state of Iowa and in agricultural states generally.
Many factors are coming together and all at once, like low grain prices, high input costs, consolidation in the industry and uncertainty from trade and tariffs.
It’s beginning to look more and more like the 1980s to me.
One thing that concerns me is the lowering of land values in Iowa.
Land value has gone down 3 percent since [this time] last year and down 5.4 percent since the same time in 2023.
That’s not as bad as it was in the 1980s. [There] was a very catastrophic drop in prices, compared to what I just quoted you for now.
And in the 1980s, that didn’t happen overnight. It kind of crept up on us very slowly.
We don’t want to let that happen again. So, we need to be vigilant today.
When it comes to land prices, as you know, if farmers lose too much land value, they won’t be able to leverage against it for debt to cover their expenses.
That happened in the 1980s, and as I said, it kind of crept up on us at that particular time. And, Congress didn’t see it coming soon enough. Congress waited too long to act.
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In the 1980s, [farmers were] pleading with Congress for the last two or three years before Congress was able to pass some help for the farmers.
In the meantime, farmers went bankrupt, and a lot of farmers were lost due to suicide.
Now, that may sound like everyday business. But if you’ve been operating a family farm and you were the fifth or sixth generation doing that, and you lost it because of bankruptcy, low prices and land values going down, you become depressed and ashamed. And I’m sure that’s why a lot of people committed suicide.
Now, we have a farm safety net in place. We’ve tried to be on top of mental health programs to a greater extent than in the past. So hopefully, all these bad things that happened in the 1980s won’t happen again.
But I’m here saying I don’t want to see it happen again.
But we can’t be complacent knowing the history of Congress being too slow to act. So, Congress ought to act now before it’s too late.
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