War on Iran and tariffs are squeezing Georgia farmers

When you sit down behind the wheel of a tractor, you aren’t thinking about geopolitics. You’re thinking about the weather, how deep the furrow is and whether the crop in the ground will yield enough to pay the bank back.

But in farming, as in the military, things that happen 10,000 miles away sometimes can still blindside you.

For 40 years, I served in the military, commanding troops in conflict zones, but today I raise cattle, and I see my neighbors’ farms going under. Right now, farmers in Northwest Georgia and across the country are in real trouble. It isn’t the weather, and it isn’t bad farm management. It’s the choices our representatives made in Washington, and how those choices are playing out around the world.

The war in Iran has cut the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, and consequently, farm diesel now costs more than $6 or $7 a gallon in many places. Higher gas prices will squeeze any family’s budget, but for a farmer at harvest, a 70% jump in diesel prices can mean losing the whole farm.

A combine can burn through 200 gallons of diesel a day, and when that cost jumps to over $1,000, a farmer who used to break even is now losing money. Diesel also runs the trucks that haul cattle to market and the dryers that dry the grain. Fertilizer is made from natural gas, and its price has gone up too.

When will Republicans speak up?

Farmers don’t set our own prices; the market does. If corn sells for $5 a bushel but the cost of growing it has gone way up, we can’t charge more to make up the difference. We eat the loss.

First the savings go, then we borrow against the equipment. Then we sell land our families have farmed for generations.

For a long time now, national Democrats have let themselves be seen as city people, who don’t care for guns or church, and don’t understand life out in the country. That hurts Democrats politically, but it hurts rural Americans more, because it leaves people feeling we have only one party to vote for.

A party that knows it has your vote doesn’t have to earn it. Unfortunately, Republicans have taken full advantage of that, and us.

The Republican politicians who represent rural Georgia stood by while USAID, a huge buyer of our soybeans, was “fed into the wood chipper.” They stood by while this administration brought in 300,000 metric tons of cheap foreign ground beef in the middle of calf sales, which cut the price cattlemen got.

Farmers don’t set our own prices; the market does. If corn sells for $5 a bushel but the cost of growing it has gone way up, we can’t charge more to make up the difference. We eat the loss.

First the savings go, then we borrow against the equipment. Then we sell land our families have farmed for generations.

For a long time now, national Democrats have let themselves be seen as city people, who don’t care for guns or church, and don’t understand life out in the country. That hurts Democrats politically, but it hurts rural Americans more, because it leaves people feeling we have only one party to vote for.

A party that knows it has your vote doesn’t have to earn it. Unfortunately, Republicans have taken full advantage of that, and us.

The Republican politicians who represent rural Georgia stood by while USAID, a huge buyer of our soybeans, was “fed into the wood chipper.” They stood by while this administration brought in 300,000 metric tons of cheap foreign ground beef in the middle of calf sales, which cut the price cattlemen got.

They said nothing when we started a trade war with Canada, Georgia’s largest agricultural export customer. They let big tech companies put in AI data centers with no rules, and nearby property values have suffered. Here in Northwest Georgia, we still have no help with PFAS in the water. Farmers still have no new farm bill.

And worst of all, our Republican representatives have refused to stop — or even to ask questions about — the war with Iran. That has driven up the price of fertilizer and diesel, and for more and more farmers the math just doesn’t work anymore. And for everyone else living in the countryside, higher fuel prices mean it costs more to fill your tank, and everything shipped to the store costs more too. Recently, we learned there’s another battle group sailing for the Middle East now, ready to resume strikes as soon as the election is past, with no end in sight.

Forever wars cost lives and treasure

Washington needs to act now. The plan is not complicated. Send emergency relief to the small family farms hit hardest by fuel prices.

Enforce our existing antitrust laws against the big oil companies and meatpackers who use a crisis to raise their profits while farmers and shoppers pay more.

And run a foreign policy that keeps trade open and us out of forever wars that cost lives and treasure and yield us nothing.

Farmers aren’t asking for a handout. We want a fair chance to do the work that feeds this country.

Every family farm that goes under leaves America less able to feed itself. Washington should protect the people who grow our food.