Farmers Brace for 2026 Crunch

FARMERS BRACE FOR 2026 CRUNCH by Mac Gordon, GAZETTE Contributing Editor A drought that developed at mid-growing season and seemed everlasting was finally upended in late September as harvest loomed across the U.S. Farm Belt.

The intensely dry period, plus falling crop prices and political upheaval in Washington completely out of farmers’ hands, made the 2025 crop year a supreme challenge for American agriculture, particularly down south.

Some peanut growers in the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley of South Georgia, possessing the country’s finest peanut acreage, used a common, but not preferred, tactic to dig their crop from the drought-hardened soil.

The peanut farmers would rather have had enough natural moisture for the big dig. With rain unavailable, some resorted to “irrigating the harvest,” as strange as that sounds, to soften the ground enough to churn and turn over the peanut crop for collection by combines.

Previous forecasts had promised rain for the beleaguered agriculturalists, but hopes faded early on for the main crops of corn, cotton, peanuts, rice and soybeans, across the Texas Plains and Rio Grande Valley to the Mississippi Delta and beyond Alabama to Georgia’s coastline.

The problems related to weather conditions heightened an overall unease in American agriculture existing for more than a few years. It’s not only about the size of the harvest. It’s about input costs and the prices farmers receive when selling their crop and, yes, the climate.

Commodity prices have slumped, affecting profit for crops in the field and in storage and future financial furnish.

Mississippi had a huge corn crop this year but farmers made little money for their efforts.

Compounding problems, the leaf-wilting two-spot cotton leafhopper arrived this year in southern fields, threatening future yields.

Maintaining agriculture’s strength is one of this nation’s most mercurial challenges, and not always due to the vagaries of the weather. U.S. farmers must constantly fight off competition from other countries’ farm production.

China for years has been American soybean growers’ best customer. Now, with President Trump’s tariff war raging, China is buying soybeans chiefly from Brazil and Argentina.

If the American tariffs remain in place and other countries reciprocate, our growers’ headaches over profits will only deepen. “

U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice,” said American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland. “Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress. Prices continue to drop and at the same time our farmers are paying significantly more for inputs and equipment. (We) cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins admitted, “These are stressful times for farmers.”

A peanut trade executive urged the industry to “look beyond peanut butter and snacks” and continue adding value to the field crop. Peanut byproducts are widely utilized in animal feedstuff, paints and even plastics, the result of extensive state and federal crop research activities at places like Stoneville, Mississippi, and Tifton, Georgia. Although there’s no vast fields of peanuts in Mississippi, that “value added” trail now stretches to feeding poultry, a huge farm sector in the state.

Sanderson Farms of Laurel (Wayne-

Sanderson Farms after merger) is utilizing peanut derivatives in poultry feed to great success in early trials. So, there’s goodnot good stories’ emanating from U.S. fields, pastures and timber stands. One lingering issue is whether Congress will step up and pass a new Farm Bill, the federal legislation that governs American agriculture, including price supports and improved crop insurance for growers.

AgriTalk.com analyst Chip Flory said of the future, “We’ve drained a lot of working capital out of (agriculture) already. And it’s really going to get tight in 2026 if this continues.”

---Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.