Though the American Farm Bureau Federation is upbeat about agriculture’s prospects under the Trump administration, President Zippy Duvall admits some policies are stirring up more anxiety than excitement.

Plans for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants have worrisome implications for the farm industry’s workforce, for example, particularly since details remain scarce, Duvall said.

“Everyone’s nervous. What makes us most nervous is we don’t know what steps the full deportation plan has in it,” he said Jan. 26 at AFBF’s annual convention in San Antonio, Texas.

Beyond the expulsion of criminal immigrants, it’s still not clear what exactly the administration has planned for undocumented workers, Duvall said.

At this point, the Farm Bureau has heard from growers about employees who are afraid to show up for work, but it hasn’t been notified of any actual immigration raids on farms, he said.

The organization expects agriculture to have a seat at the table and advocate for immigration and labor reforms that won’t jeopardize U.S. food security, Duvall said.

“We’re ready to work with Congress to make sure that happens,” he said.

Apart from the deportation issue, labor costs and shortages are generally a top priority for the industry, he said.

“That is the problem that is on farmers’ minds everywhere I go,” Duvall said.

The Farm Bureau is optimistic about making headway with the Trump administration on other labor-related issues, such as getting surging wages under control for H-2A agriculture guest workers, he said. The organization is also critical of stricter H-2A regulations implemented by the Biden administration.

“We have turned up the volume on this issue,” he said. “We rely on those men and women every day and they deserve to be treated fairly, but we need a program that is also fair to farmers and ranchers.”

HHS agenda

Another concern for the organization is the “Make America Healthy Again” doctrine of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the administration’s nominee to head the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Duvall said.

“Of course we share that same goal,” but improving the nation’s health outcomes doesn’t need to endanger its food supply, he said.

The MAHA movement considers “Big Food” as a prime culprit, alongside “Big Pharma” and “Big Tech,” responsible for the poor diets and chronic illnesses of many Americans. The philosophy is known to look askance at pesticides, biotechnology and other modern tools on which conventional farmers depend.

Trade issues

Abandoning such established farm practices may have unintended consequences for the supply chain and undermine food security, Duvall said.

Increased tariffs on foreign imports could invite retaliatory measures that harm agriculture, but the Farm Bureau is heartened by the Trump administration’s past assistance for farmers facing trade disruptions, he said.

During his first term in office in 2019, President Donald Trump enacted a “market facilitation program” authorized to disburse $14.5 billion in direct payments to growers affected by retaliatory tariffs.

The administration should try to reinvigorate farm exports, as the U.S. has suffered from an agricultural trade deficit for three years, Duvall said.

“Farmers want open markets and we want trade agreements,” he said.

Though the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal struck during Trump’s previous term has “room for improvement,” the agreement set the stage for a reversal of Mexico’s prohibition against genetically engineered corn, which underscores the importance of such treaties, Duvall said.

Domestic issues

 

On the domestic front, the Farm Bureau will be pressing lawmakers to pass farm bill legislation for the third consecutive year, which is necessary to offer growers modernized crop insurance and other risk management options, he said.

“It’s time to quit kicking the can down the road and provide certainty for our farmers,” Duvall said. “Everyone in this country depends on a farmer every single day.”

As frustrating as the delays have been, the outlook for a new farm bill is promising given the newly-elected House and Senate, both of which are now dominated by Republicans, he said. The Farm Bureau was pleased with a version passed by House’s GOP majority last year, which later stalled in the formerly Democrat-controlled Senate.

“Relationships are the cornerstone of our success,” Duvall said. “We think we’re going to get good things done for agriculture.”

The Farm Bureau is likewise hopeful about the nomination of Brooke Rollins, a Trump administration official who grew up on a farm and went to college for agricultural development, to head the USDA.

“I can’t see anything in her background that would make us concerned,” he said.

On the whole, the organization’s successes in advocating for agriculture should make farmers confident that it will continue swaying policies in their favor, Duvall said.

“There’s plenty of proof of the influence we’ve had,” he said.

• For example, the Farm Bureau persuaded the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to exclude agriculture from “climate disclosure” requirements from publicly-traded corporations, he said. Growers feared they’d effectively be swept under the regulation’s purview as companies examined and reported the carbon emissions of their supply chains.

“We were told all over town in Washington, D.C. that we wouldn’t be able to fight that rule,” Duvall said. “It just shows the strength and power of our organization.”

• Another victory for agriculture came when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a legal principle known as Chevron deference, under which courts deferred to the federal government’s regulatory interpretation of ambiguous legal provisions passed by Congress, he said.

Critics of the doctrine argued such deference gave federal agencies too much leeway, resulting in regulatory overhauls each time a new presidential administration took office and re-interpreted environmental laws and other statutes.

“Farmers want to do the right thing but they need certainty,” Duvall said.

• When developing “climate smart” policies for agriculture, which are meant to reduce carbon emissions, the USDA took the Farm Bureau’s advice and made such practices voluntary and incentive-based, he said.

“We don’t have the harsh mandates we hear about in Europe and we led the way to make that happen,” he said.

Though the organization relies on economists and other policy experts to bolster its arguments, Duvall said the voices of ordinary farmers and ranchers are what truly give the Farm Bureau its clout among the nation’s leaders.

In 2024, for instance, Farm Bureau members communicated with lawmakers and regulators 50,000 times through phone calls, texts, emails and letters, setting a record for the past decade, he said.

“We have to build on that. We need everybody stepping up in 2025,” Duvall said. “We can move mountains when we work together. I have seen it happen.”