The Painful Politics Of Agricultural Surpluses

Only a select few would claim agricultural surpluses are a sexy topic. But in this arena the seeds have been sown for a potential backlash against the current US administration, as recently decimated international food aid policies were once a pressure release valve for tensions with the agriculture lobby over slumping crop prices – a problem faced by the US government again today. 

Trump’s vision is of America as a producer, an export powerhouse, maker and grower of things the world wants to buy. For a government that wants to see exports booming, then, it must surely appear like good news that January reports showed bumper crop yields of grain, corn, and soy from the USA. What can be better than having lots of the stuff others around the world want? But typical supply and demand mechanics mean that farmers harvesting their crop only to feed a glut in the market will face stiffer competition for buyers, and for a crop they will have to sell at a lower price – possibly losing money on it altogether.  

As they feel the squeeze, farmers’ dissatisfaction will ripple through their various trade bodies and cooperatives until being absorbed by the agricultural lobby in Washington. And when the US agricultural lobby kicks, it kicks hard. H. L. Mencken lambasted the American farmer as the ‘pet above all other pets’ of Congress, ‘whose welfare is alleged to be the chief end of democratic statecraft, whose patriotism is the so-called bulwark of the so-called Republic.’ And what doubt can there be he would say the same today? At current clip the agriculture lobby in Washington spends half a billion dollars every five years.  

What can an administration do to pacify its farmers – especially when it wants to orient its economy towards exports as much as possible? Public Law 480, introduced by the Eisenhower administration and also known as ‘Food for Peace’, gave the US government a way to grant credit on good terms for certain (friendly) countries to purchase the surplus fruits of American agriculture – grain in particular. This expanded markets and helped keep prices up for American farmers. 

‘Food for Peace’ was followed some years later under the Kennedy administration by the establishment of the World Food Programme – eventually a special organ of the UN. Kennedy realised that the US government buying surplus food from American farmers and donating it to countries in need took pressure off of America on both the domestic and international fronts. 

But last year the Trump administration tore up the US international aid agenda in a screeching ideological tantrum, gutting USAID and completely reimagining the USDA. This has seen the $1.6 billion in annual grants for food sales via ‘Food for Peace’ wiped from the 2026 budget and the US government’s donations to the World Food Programme dry up by 90%. Some international food aid funding remains; a ‘humanitarian’ hand stretched out by Trump to the UN in December 2025 comes with the possibility of $2 billion that could go towards increased international food aid donations or subsidies. And American civil society can (and does) still show largesse through cash donations, but without Uncle Sugar this comes nowhere close to meeting funding shortfalls. 

If the government does not about-turn on international food aid, another choice would be to literally burn down the surplus crop to solve the agricultural price slumps, as happened in the 1930s under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. But the optics of this today would surely be devastating amongst Trump’s rural base, especially when he is going so far to keep farmers identifying with his agenda; the 2025 National Farm Security Strategy bears the banner ‘farm security is national security’ above a giant blurry-edged Donald Trump superimposed onto a corn farm. Though looking like a ghostly apparition in a dust bowl, its effect is no doubt intended to show Trump as a definitive figure for rural America, not the deep state government man coming to burn down the grain fields.

But even if the US government did begin to open up billions of aid funding once more to try and ease the growing domestic tension in its agriculture sector, external factors will now be weighing against American interests harder than before. The likes of Brazil have also recorded bumper crops - particularly of soy. Already bucked by a period in 2025 when Chinese buyers refused American soy, stiff external competition from the likes of Brazil is going to be sustained for American farmers in the future. Moreover, signs currently point to a moratorium on grain harvested from deforested areas of Brazil breaking down. As a result, even cheaper and more environmentally damaging crops will be flowing out of Brazil onto the world market, helping to keep the lid down tight on American farmers. 

The Trump administration is therefore about to face tough challenges from that irrepressible fact of American political life, whom Mencken called a fraud and an ignoramus – the American farmer. Trump might think he is smarter than that, but unless the administration begins eating large helpings of humble pie on the international food aid front, Washington may get trapped into a damaging confrontation with the agriculture lobby that it cannot easily win.   

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Einboeck.official

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