The current outlook for this country’s farmers is bleak. Other than the beef sector, where both demand and prices are up, US farmers face falling prices and rising costs. In 2025, crop farmers lost an estimated $34.6 billion, and 15,000 farming operations called it quits—part of a total loss of 166,000 farms since 2017.

We asked Precious Tshabalala and Omanjana Goswami, co-authors of the new UCS report Less Fertilizer, Better Outcomes, about the factors at play and one solution that would bring farmers some relief while protecting public health and the environment.

Q: Despite farmers’ support for President Trump, his administration (both now and in his first term) has pursued policies such as trade wars and targeting immigrant workers that have harmed farmers. The administration has responded by giving farmers a handout. This approach doesn’t make a lot of sense—what do you think is behind it?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: Tariffs have often been used as leverage in trade negotiations and to reduce trade deficits, but in this case, farmers end up being collateral damage in the process. Since they’re key constituencies politically, the administration gives them bailouts to keep them from escaping bankruptcy. The farmer aid packages helped during the president’s first term, but now, with an estimated bumper corn harvest and significant market losses through tariffs and cuts to foreign aid, many farmers are at risk of a crisis. Only half of farms will turn a profit this year, farmer bankruptcies have doubled, and the United States is experiencing a historic agriculture trade deficit. The new $12 billion aid package will not be sufficient to offset these losses.

Q: The Trump administration’s tariffs seem to hurt farmers in two ways: by lowering the price of their products while driving up the costs of inputs such as fertilizer and equipment. Is this a fair assessment?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: Yes. Tariffs led to retaliatory tariffs and trade measures from other countries, then drove down the price of commodity crops. China, for example, which is a major US export market, imposed tariffs on agricultural products and suspended soybean imports from the United States, seeking alternative sources such as Brazil. Reduced export demand means there is excess supply in the US market and, in turn, prices plummet.

While commodity prices fell, tariffs have simultaneously increased the cost of agricultural inputs. For example, between 25% and 30% of nitrogen fertilizer is imported into the United States, and almost all phosphorus and potassium is imported. Consequently, input costs have increased well above commodity prices, and farmers are operating at a loss even after receiving support from USDA subsidy programs.

Q: The rising cost of one type of input in particular—fertilizer—brings us to your recent analysis that shows farmers are applying much more fertilizer than they need to. Can you elaborate?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Fertilizer overuse is a pervasive problem in today’s agricultural systems, especially on farms that engage in monoculture of commodity crops like corn and soybean. Our report highlights that in 2022, 78% of all cropland in the country—roughly 236 million acres—received synthetic fertilizer input of some kind. Plants cannot use all of that fertilizer, so it remains behind in the soil, leading to environmental damage through runoff, soil degradation, and breakdown into heat-trapping gases that directly contribute to climate change.

In our analysis we highlight that recent peer-reviewed scientific publications show as much as 50% of fertilizer is applied in excess. Agriculture often isn’t associated as a direct source of pollution; our brains automatically think of pristine green and rolling fields when we imagine farms. But despite that beautiful picture, agriculture is actually a major source of pollution in the United States, and overuse of synthetic fertilizer is creating a multi-pronged pollution crisis. It’s not that farmers want to pollute and cause environmental damage—they see themselves as stewards of their land. But farmers are caught in a system that is hard to escape, locking them into cropping patterns that demand more fertilizer.

Q: But don’t farmers know what’s best for their operations? Are they being misinformed?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Farmers overapply fertilizer as an insurance policy to make sure their crops have enough nutrients when needed. Today’s agricultural systems and markets are set up in a way to maximize yield, which puts pressure on farmers to apply more fertilizer. There are no penalties that come with fertilizer overapplication—besides of course the higher costs.

Farm consolidation is also responsible for the overapplication problem. Fertilizer manufacturers and agribusiness corporations aggressively lobby to influence agriculture policy, and their profits rise when producers are dependent on high application rates. Most fertilizer application recommendations for the Midwest come from retailers who sell fertilizer and who stand to profit the most, not from independent institutions that have no conflict of interest.

Q: Fertilizer overuse obviously wastes money that farmers can’t afford to lose given their extremely tight profit margins, but how else does it hurt farming operations?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: With heavy use of fertilizer, the soil’s ability to store water and replenish nutrients is depleted, keeping farmers in a vicious cycle of fertilizer overapplication.

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Soil that can’t hold water loses its sponge-like quality and becomes hard and cement-like. This is why once farmers hop onto the fertilizer treadmill it is almost impossible to hop off; they need to supply nutrients from synthetic sources that soils have lost the ability to store naturally.

Q: And besides the impact on farmers, what are the other consequences of fertilizer overuse?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Nitrogen runoff from excessive fertilizer use wreaks havoc on the environment. When washed into lakes and streams, this runoff helps algae multiply very quickly and create massive algal blooms that consume dissolved oxygen in the water, creating low- to no-oxygen areas in aquatic ecosystems called “dead zones,” where nothing can survive. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that appears every summer and spans thousands of square miles has been directly attributed to fertilizer runoff from midwestern farms that is carried down the Mississippi River. It is perhaps the best example of how far-ranging the impact of nitrogen pollution can be.

Nitrates from fertilizer runoff also pollute groundwater sources and often end up contaminating drinking water supplies, threatening communities and affecting human health.

Fertilizer overuse is also a major contributor to the climate crisis. Unused fertilizer is transformed by soil bacteria into nitrous oxide and released into the atmosphere, where it is 273 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in capturing heat. In the United States, fertilizer mismanagement on agricultural soils is the largest unmitigated source of nitrous oxide, responsible for about 75% of the total emissions.

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: The cost of fertilizer overuse is not only environmental but economic too. Taxpayers are on the hook for pollution cleanup costs and public health expenditures. Additionally, the tourism industry loses approximately $1 billion in income due to water bodies being contaminated by nutrient pollution and algal blooms, and the total annual impact of nitrogen pollution on health care, water treatment, and recreational opportunities is estimated to be a staggering $157 billion. These costs are not sustainable in the long run, and action should be taken immediately.

Q: What is likely to change farmers’ behavior?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Farmers need robust policy instruments to ensure they have the right financial and technical incentives to adopt and implement practices that improve fertilizer application and management. Several conservation-focused practices, such as no-till, cover crops, buffer strips, wetlands restoration, and managed grazing have been shown to reduce fertilizer use, improve soil resilience, keep nutrients in place, and build long-term soil health.

Voluntary USDA conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) provide farmers with financial and technical assistance to implement these practices. CSP and EQIP are backed by decades of scientific evidence and farmer experience, and they are pretty popular among farmers, but they are chronically underfunded and oversubscribed, so only about one-third of eligible applications are approved.

Q: You recommend that this funding be incorporated into the new food and farm bill, but we have been waiting almost three years for Congress to pass it. What is holding it up and how likely are we to see the situation change this year?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: The food and farm bill has been extended three times in the last few years, so essentially we are still operating under the framework of the 2018 bill. Party-line disagreements on critical provisions have prevented a new bill from being passed. Several versions of the bill have been introduced in prior years, but lack of bipartisan support did not allow full consideration of the bill in both chambers of Congress. A new draft of the bill was introduced by the House Agriculture Committee in February, and it passed out of committee last month.

Since 2022, UCS has been advocating for a transformational food and farm bill that creates a fair and equitable food and farming system for all. This would include an expansion of voluntary conservation programs that allows more farmers to adopt practices that retain farm productivity while preserving air and water quality and soil health.

We are yet to see whether these provisions can be negotiated into the current version of the bill, whether the bill can be signed into law with bipartisan support, or whether it will fall on its face and we’ll get another extension instead.

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