Our Farmers Are Being Squeezed From Every Direction. Congress Must Act | GUEST COMMENTARY

By Congresswoman April McClain-Delaney

Originally published in the May/June 2026 edition Maryland Farm Bureau's newspaper, The Old Line Farmer.

I did not learn about farming from a briefing book. I learned it watching my father, a potato farmer who never talked about margins or global markets, but who carried the weight of every difficult season in the quiet calculations at the kitchen table. Farming is not just a job. It is a constant negotiation with forces beyond your control. And right now, farmers across Western Maryland are facing more of those forces at once than at any point in recent memory.

That is why this moment feels so urgent.

Fertilizer prices are no longer just high. They are destabilizing. I have heard it directly across the district: farmers asking whether they can afford to plant at all, or how much they will need to cut back simply to make the numbers work. Recent analyses show that ongoing trade conflicts and supply chain disruptions have cost American farmers more than $25 billion. Farm bankruptcies have risen 46 percent. Nearly 70 percent of producers report they cannot afford fertilizer at current prices, and 94 percent say their financial situation has worsened. Here in Maryland, families have absorbed an estimated $1,700 in additional costs per household, with more than $4 billion drained from our state's economy.

But fertilizer is only part of the story. Farmers are being squeezed from every direction: higher costs due to tariffs, immigration-related labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and now cuts to the very USDA programs designed to help them weather exactly these kinds of shocks. At the same time, USDA is moving forward with a major reorganization without Congressional approval, one I strongly believe will cost more in the long run than it saves and will undercut vital services farmers depend on. As experienced civil servants refuse to uproot their lives to relocate, decades of institutional knowledge walk out the door with them. That translates directly into less technical assistance and less support for rural America.

(Rep. McClain-Delaney speaks to attendees at Maryland Farm Bureau's Annual Convention, December 2025)

Nowhere is that loss more concrete than at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. BARC is one of the crown jewels of American agricultural science. For nearly 100 years, it has helped farmers fight pests and disease, improve nutrition, house our National Bee Lab, and protect natural resources. Its work on the screwworm parasite, currently devastating livestock across the country, is critical to Maryland's dairy farmers right now. And the research conducted there is irreplaceable in ways that are difficult to fully convey. The bees at BARC have been pollinating the same flora for decades. That continuity is the scientific baseline against which all research is measured. If we decommission BARC, we do not just lose a facility. We lose a standard of comparison that cannot simply be rebuilt. 

It is for these reasons that I could not in good conscience vote for the Farm Bill. When farmers are left with inadequate resources or remedies in the problems they face, we in Congress have failed to do our jobs. I will keep fighting alongside my colleagues on the House Agriculture Committee to push on the Administration to act in the best interest of our farming families. 

The farmers I grew up around, including my father, never asked for special treatment. They wanted predictability. They wanted transparency. They wanted a government that understood the realities of farming and responded when conditions turned against them.

Right now, that system is being tested. Washington must meet this moment with urgency, clarity, and meaningful policy that reflects what is actually at stake, for agriculture, for rural America, and for every American who depends on the food our farmers grow.

---

Representative April McClain-Delaney represents Maryland's Sixth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the lone Maryland member on the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture.

Views expressed in this guest commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policy of the Maryland Farm Bureau