Under Biden, Farmers Are Being Clobbered By Historically High Inflation, Exorbitant Fuel Prices, And Overregulation

BIDEN’S POLICIES HAVE ATTACKED AMERICAN FARMERS AND THEIR LIVELIHOODS

• Under Biden, farmers are struggling to “just break even” as production costs outpace commodity prices.
  • American farmers and ranchers are facing 40-year high inflation, high gas and diesel prices, and supply chain shortages. 
• Prices have increased for nearly all goods that farmers and ranchers need, with crucial fertilizer prices spiking under Biden right before planting season began this year.​
  • Three commonly used fertilizers have dramatically increased in price, with anhydrous ammonia up 235 percent, urea up 149 percent, and liquid nitrogen up 192 percent. 
  • A Purdue University study found 30 percent of farmers reported struggling to get herbicides, 27 percent machinery parts, and 26 percent fertilizers.
  • The USDA’s latest Agricultural Prices report found that the price of livestock feed is up 15 percent over the past year.
• Across the nation farmers are underwater thanks to Biden’s rising prices.
  • California poultry farmer Dan Jones: “the prices for our feed and labor have skyrocketed. It’s gone up significantly.”
  • Arkansas farmer Matt Miles says fertilizer is up 35 percent from just last fall, with Roundup up nearly 90 percent.
  • Kentucky farmer Jenny McGlasson: “All of our costs have increased, everything … the worst is probably fertilizer, fertilizer has actually doubled since last year.”
• The Biden administration has no plans to help farmers with rising costs.
  • Biden USAID Administrator Samantha Power said fertilizer shortages and higher costs will “hasten transitions” to “natural solutions.”

NEAR RECORD HIGH GAS AND DIESEL PRICES HURT FARMERS’ BOTTOM LINES  

• American farmers are facing increased fuel costs, with all 50 states hitting record-high gas and record-high diesel prices since Biden took office.
• With diesel prices rising by more than $2 in just one year, farmers are struggling to make ends meet.
  • National Black Farmers Association President John Boyd, Jr: “I’ve been farming for 39 years and I’ve never experienced paying $6 for a gallon of diesel fuel.”
  • California farmer Don Cameron: “We have no option but to buy the fuel at the high price. Then try and get back wherever we can, but that's pretty hard to do.”
  • New Jersey farmer Grant Harris: “the trucking rates … have doubled in the last six months. It’s just, crazy.”

BIDEN’S GIFT FOR FARMERS AND RANCHERS: MORE REGULATIONS

• Biden has imposed burdensome regulations on American farmers and ranchers.
• The Biden administration’s Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS) would drastically expand the jurisdiction of the EPA and federal regulators over farm and ranch land.
  • This is an overreach of federal power that allows regulators to examine “waterways” as small as a pothole or a ditch, resulting in large fines and potentially halting farming operations.
  • State Departments of Agriculture, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Farm Bureau, and 21 other agricultural groups all oppose this Biden rule.
• In July, Biden’s EPA proposed new herbicide regulations that farmers are saying could drive food prices even higher.
  • The regulations would dramatically reduce the amount of a herbicide that farmers say is “crucial to ensure productivity and low prices.”
• Biden is imposing onerous climate regulations that will overwhelmingly hurt small farmers by requiring them to track and report emissions and climate data to the companies they work with.
  • This burdensome regulation will hurt small family-owned farms that do not have the full scale compliance departments of large farms.

FOOD SHORTAGES MAY BE ON THE WAY

• Farmers are now warning of food shortages.
  • National Black Farmers Association President John Boyd, Jr: “For so long we have enjoyed lots of food in this country. So, we've never ever faced a food shortage — and I think that's coming in the coming months.”
• Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Legislative Aide Kyle Kotzmoyer: “If the farmers cannot get crops out of the ground, then there is not food on the shelves.”
• Biden has even acknowledged this possibility saying food shortages are “going to be real.”

BIDEN’S DEATH TAX WOULD CRUSH AMERICAN FARMERS

• To fund his “Build Back Broke” agenda, Biden has called for repealing the “step-up in basis” tax provision.
  • Repealing this is effectively a new death tax that would cause some family farms to “liquidate businesses, leverage assets, or lay off employees to cover the tax hit.”
  • Biden’s new death tax would kill 80,000 jobs, lower workers’ wages, and shrink the U.S. economy by $100 billion over ten years. 
• According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, Biden’s proposal to impose this new death tax would be “devasting to American agriculture and the broader U.S. economy.”
  • Under a Democrat-backed bill that mirrors Biden’s death tax proposals, a farmer’s average taxes would increase by more than $726,104 per farm.
• Despite Biden’s claim that his tax proposal would only affect two percent of farm operations, his own USDA found 17 percent of small farms, 66 percent of medium-sized farms, and 80 percent of large farms would have a new tax burden with the elimination of stepped-up basis.