By Tim Burrack: Arlington, Iowa USA
The big blue wave was so strong for Democrats last week that it even washed across landlocked Iowa.
In its aftermath, the message from America’s agricultural heartland is loud and clear: Politicians take farmers for granted at their peril.
Here in Iowa—the nation’s quintessential farm state—Democrats won the races for governor and senator. They also flipped three congressional districts. In the words of Iowa Public Radio, Democrats enjoyed “their biggest election night in years.”
The same was true across much of the rest of the country, as Democrats gained firm control of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, in what is widely seen as a rebuke of President Trump and his policies.
Now that a week has passed, the shock of the result has worn off—and it’s time to take stock from a farmer’s perspective.
I’ll start with an observation that farmers vote in lots of ways. It’s safe to say that most farmers prefer Republicans most of the time, but many are loyal Democrats. Some go back and forth, depending on circumstances. Few of us are single-issue voters who care only about farm policy. Like most Americans, we are also interested in schools, crime, immigration, national security, social issues, and more.
Whatever our political preferences, a lot of us are united in the opinion that prices are too high for the things we buy and they’re too low for the things we sell.
We also believe it didn’t have to be this way.
Farmers are familiar with rising and falling prices. We cycle through seasons of boom and bust, plus ordinary times in between. We recognize that weather on the other side of the world can influence markets here. We know that successful farming requires the resilience to meet the challenges that are outside our control.
Too many of our current troubles, however, are within our control. They are manmade. They are the predictable result of poor choices by public officials who ought to know better.
Broad-based tariffs on goods that used to flow across borders with relative ease are costly. Farmers are paying more for everything from fertilizer to machinery. This means consumers are paying more for food.
Nobody wins a trade war, but some politicians appear determined to learn this lesson the hard way.
Fuel prices are also a major worry. The war with Iran has had a big effect by disrupting oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. Opinions vary on the need for the war and whether it should continue, but there’s no arguing about the fact that it has made energy much more expensive.
The Trump administration has tried to soften the economic blows with billions of dollars in payments to farmers. The latest assistance package, announced last month, involves $8 billion to offset diesel costs.
Farmers would rather have trade than aid. Give us opportunities, not subsidies. From my standpoint, the solution is simple: Lift the tariffs, stop the trade wars, and make deals that give farmers better access to customers in other countries.
President Trump may have assumed that farmers would always be there for him and his allies. It’s probably true that even in 2026, most farmers voted for Republicans. Yet in talking with my friends and neighbors, I’m convinced that fewer did—and even the loyalists did so with less enthusiasm. Here’s how the New York Times summed it up: “Anger over tariffs and higher costs … led many Republican farmers and ranchers to vote blue—or stay home.”
That’s one way to interpret an election result in Kansas, a state that’s nearly as famous for its farms as Iowa. Democrats won a Senate seat there for the first time since 1932. As the BBC noted in a headline: “The last time a Kansas Democrat was in the Senate, Judy Garland was filming the Wizard of Oz.”
In her movie role as Dorothy, Garland spoke a celebrated line: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” My own feeling is like Dorothy’s: For the time being, we are not in “Red Country” either.
The votes of farmers may be up for grabs in 2028. Let’s see who is listening and wants them.
Tim Burrack raises corn and soybeans on a NE Iowa family farm. He is a founding member of the
Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org
