Soybean farmers across the Midwest are entering the 2026 growing season under compounding financial pressure that shows no sign of easing. The U.S.-China trade war that erupted after tariffs announced in April 2025 drove soybean prices sharply lower as China effectively boycotted U.S. exports for months. A deal reached in late 2025 brought China back to the market, but according to the American Soybean Association, farmers still lost nearly **$75 per harvested acre of soybeans** on the 2025 crop even after receiving federal assistance. The effects of that trade disruption, combined with the Iran war’s impact on fertilizer and fuel costs, are defining the financial reality that farmers are walking into as they begin planting corn and soybeans this spring.
Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association, put it plainly: it looks like another year of negative returns. That assessment is echoed in data from the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture, which surveyed 400 farmers in late March 2026 and found that nearly half said their farm operation is financially worse off than a year ago. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb through 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
How soybean farmers tariffs and the trade war with China damaged markets that have not recovered
The structural damage from the trade war extends beyond the dollars lost in 2025. Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, noted that U.S. soybean exports are still running 15 to 20 percent below normal expected levels. When China halted purchases, the U.S. could not find enough alternative markets to absorb the volume. China redirected its buying toward Brazil, which surpassed the United States as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago and has continued to expand production at record pace.
Joseph Glauber, who served as chief economist at USDA from 2008 to 2014, described the shift as a significant and lasting change in U.S. market position: when China has put tariffs on U.S. soybeans in the past, it has tended to buy from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil. The U.S. is no longer as dominant in the global soybean export market as it once was. The $12 billion temporary federal aid package rolled out in December partially offset 2025 losses, but farmers and economists say it was not enough to restore what was lost.
The Iran war added a fertilizer and fuel shock to already squeezed soybean farmers
The U.S.-Iran conflict that began on February 28, 2026 created a secondary shock for corn and soybean farmers. Soybeans do not require nitrogen fertilizer, but virtually all soybean farmers also grow corn, which does. Approximately half of the global supply of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, comes from the Middle East, with Qatar and Saudi Arabia among the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. When the Strait of Hormuz disruption slowed those flows, urea prices rose sharply.
Many Midwest farmers who purchased fertilizer well in advance of the planting season were partially insulated, but those without the cash reserves to buy early are now facing elevated prices during planting. Dave Walton, a corn and soybean farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some neighbors who lacked cash last fall to buy fertilizer were struggling to budget for the input. Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, noted that facilities in the Middle East critical for exporting chemicals, oil, and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the conflict, and that supply chain recovery will take time. For more on how the Strait of Hormuz disruption is affecting global food systems, Agroinformacion covered the FAO warning on the scope of the fertilizer supply blockage.
On the ground in Nebraska, a fifth-generation farmer describes the squeeze
Doug Bartek, a 60-year-old fifth-generation farmer with a 2,000-acre operation near Wahoo, Nebraska, and chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association, described the situation as feeling cornered. The inputs — fertilizer, seed, chemicals, parts — have seen dramatic markup, he said, while soybean prices have stayed low and fuel costs climbed further after the Iran war. Bartek rents three-quarters of his land, and he said absentee landowners are raising rents without understanding what is happening on the ground.
Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described a liquidity cash crunch affecting many operations, with farmers trying to figure out how to deal with everything at once. Bartek said he has heard of suicides, bankruptcies, and forced auction sales among peers. He worries about his son, who bought a farm a few years ago, and at times wonders whether encouraging him to enter farming was the right decision. The original reporting from Wahoo, Nebraska was published by the AP via PBS NewsHour on April 13, 2026.