Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
“The Agricultural Economy: High Ag Inputs”
Monday, September 29, 2025
I come to the floor to talk about the agricultural economy. There are many big issues facing our nation’s farmers this season.
There is stress in the grain producing areas of the United States. That’s true of my state of Iowa.
Stress comes from the fact that farmers are losing $1.10 per bushel on corn, [and on] soybeans about $2 per bushel.
Stress comes not only from low prices for their products, but high input costs, uncertainty in the international markets – particularly the issue of tariffs.
Then also we have the issue of high interest rates, market consolidation and I suppose you could go on.
Today, I’d like to focus on [the] high input costs that farmers will be paying this season.
The average production cost[s] for farmers are down only three percent since that very high peak in 2022.
Meanwhile, corn prices are down 50 percent in the same period.
To put it plainly, many farmers will be lucky if they break even this fall.
Those words, “break even,” [are] not possible just because of price. If they break even, it’s only because of the expectant bumper crops that we’ll have throughout the Midwest – at least that I know about.
In response to the farmers’ concerns about the market concentration and changes in anti-dumping and counter-vailing duty rates, I introduced the Fertilizer Research Act to shed light on the fertilizer industry.
The issue of ag inputs has become a large enough problem that last [week], the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice announced a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on agriculture anti-trust issues.
I’m certain many farmers are glad to see these developments, but they need more immediate relief.
This will become more of an issue as the harvest progresses.
My message is, as I see it from my state of Iowa: it’s beginning to look like the 1980s agriculture depression all over.
Congress was too slow to respond in the 1980s.
Thousands of farmers went out of business in the 1980s, and that should concern all of us.
Because, with only two percent of the people producing all the food for the 98 percent, we can’t let the destruction of the family farmer happen in 2025 like it did in the 1980s.
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