No matter which way you slice it, 2024 was a difficult one for many farmers. And as confirmation hearings loom for President Trump’s picks for federal posts, anxiety is already ramping up for next year.

On the positive side, Congress has floated a continuing resolution to fund the government through mid-March, including a 1-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill and $31 billion in economic aid to farmers as well.

Farm advocates are imploring U.S. lawmakers to pass the resolution, after natural disasters, drought, high input prices, skyrocketing inflation and declining income drained profitability for many farmers this year.

In the longer term, there’s more uncertainty on the policy front. Trump’s pick for the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has made headlines for his hardline stance on food safety, including the use of pesticides.

According to Fox News, Kennedy has begun meeting with Senators this week and was reportedly warned by some farm-state lawmakers not to go crazy regulating farmers. Some of them want to preserve technology that has improved farming efficiency and output, such as GM crops.

“They've got to be able to use modern farming techniques, and that involves a lot of things, not only really sophisticated equipment, but also fertilizers and pesticides. So, we have to have that conversation,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said in a Fox News Digital article.

“When I started farming in 1960, we raised 50 bushels of corn to the acre. Now, we raise on an annual average about 200 in Iowa. A lot more than that,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa told reporters. “And you can’t feed 9 billion people on the face of the earth [if] we don’t take advantage of genetic engineering.”

An Off-Ramp

One of the best views I’ve seen yet on Kennedy’s viewpoints on agriculture was shared by Great American Insurance Group. The DTN article said that Kennedy declared on social media in October that current ag policy is, “destroying America’s health on every level” as he laid out his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Addressing farm policy, Kennedy said it, “destroys the health of America’s soil and water by tilting the playing field in favor of more chemicals, more herbicides, more insecticides, more concentrated monocropping and feedlots, and finally, it destroys the health of consumers.”

Kennedy then proclaimed Trump’s administration would change the rules and "give farmers an off-ramp from the current system that destroys their health, wrecks the soil, makes Americans sick and destroys family farms.”

The next Trump presidency would focus on regenerative agriculture, he added: “We’re going to encourage sustainable, regenerative farming that can build soils and replenish aquifers.”

We certainly would applaud that at No-Till Farmer. Our publications and conferences, of course, seek to convince growers to take that step for the future to improve their profitability. We’ve called for reduced tillage or straight no-till and cover crops. We’ve implored farmers to adopt more sustainable irrigation practices in the southern Great Plains to preserve the Ogallala Aquifer.

But let’s not whitewash the realities here. It’s one thing for a politician gunning for Senate confirmation to champion regenerative agriculture, and it’s another putting this into practice.

The transition from traditional practices to dynamic, management-intensive regenerative farming is a very challenging one, for even the best farmers. Quitting GMO crops, dumping herbicides and pesticides and abandoning fertilizers on any farm takes an evolution in management.

What does this off-ramp to better agriculture that Kennedy mentions look like? Who is going to absorb the risk? Where will the funding come from to provide technical assistance to help growers transition? Why should farmers trust Congress when they can’t even get a new Farm Bill approved?

A Murky Outlook

During a recent webinar with us, Alejandro Plastina, from the University of Missouri, shared the economic prospects for farmers in 2025. Suffice it to say that inflation-adjusted net farm income isn’t expected to suddenly skyrocket in the coming years.

Input prices have started to come down from the highs of 2022 but are still historically steep. All things being equal, farmers will continue facing cost pressures for the foreseeable future, he notes.

The threat of tariffs being levied against certain countries could hurt our ag markets even further, depending on how negotiations work out.

Moving the needle on regenerative farming will require more than just talk. I’m imploring federal agencies and our lawmakers plan their next steps carefully and “do no harm” to farmers’ pocketbooks by avoiding harsh, sweeping bans on every bit of technology in use.

Regenerative farming can be done in the U.S. But farmers will need a lot of support if they’re expected to step off the treadmill of high-input, high-yield, resource-intensive farming to a more profitable future.