Brent Rendel grabbed an ink pen, signed the back of the check he received from the Farmer Bridge Assistance program and took it straight to the bank to put the payment toward loans.
The third-generation family-farm owner from Miami, Oklahoma, said all the farmers he knows who received a check did the same.
The $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program, announced by the Trump administration in December, was a one-time payment to help farmers recover from high input costs and global trade disruptions, including the trade war with China, during the 2025 crop year.
The Farm Service Agency under the United States Department of Agriculture provided up to $155,000 to each producer. Rendel was one of the farmers who applied and received aid.
“Whenever you get an influx of cash like that, it really just replaces income that I was expecting,” Rendel said. “(It) was applied to the loans that were needed to cover the expenses or the lack of income. In that aspect, it helped me keep going. You’ll see some media reports of farmers getting six-figure incomes from government checks. Well, I can assure you, it’s not like we get these checks and are like ‘OK, let’s go to Tahiti.”
The assistance program helped farmers like Rendel stay afloat, but profits remained low as farmers continuously faced mounting financial pressures from trade disruptions with China, rising production costs, restrictive tariffs and instability from the Iran conflict.
Since 2022, soybean farmers in the Prairie Gateway, a United States Department of Agriculture region that includes Oklahoma, have consistently seen negative returns. In 2024, returns were about -$70 per planted acre.
Dire economic conditions caused farmers to cut back on essential supplies or sell their land altogether, said Edmond Bonjour, a senior extension specialist for stored products at Oklahoma State University.
“There are some farms that have had to sell out,” Bonjour said. “There are some farms, I think, that are struggling and trying to make that determination of ‘Do we still keep going?’ Some farms also have been sold just because they can’t make it pencil out to be profitable anymore.”
When farms and ranches go bankrupt, fewer products can be sold or bought, which negatively affects the U.S. economy as a whole.
“They (bankruptcies) have already elevated over the past couple of years,” Rendel said. “So you can imagine, without the level of assistance that we’ve gotten from the government, they would be even higher.”
Rendel is selling soybeans at $11 per bushel, which is how much he sold them for at certain times 30 years ago, he said. While the price of grain has remained relatively the same, production costs continue to climb.
“All of our inputs keep up with inflation, but what we sell doesn’t,” Rendel said.
Producers lost a major buyer for their soybean crop in April 2025. U.S. President Donald Trump put a 34% tax on imports coming from China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans, according to AP News. China boycotted U.S. soybean purchases and turned to Brazil and Argentina, where soybean production has steadily increased, driving prices even lower in the U.S.
A vast majority of soybeans are purchased from the U.S. after harvest, which begins in September and runs through spring, before China turns to other countries, said Todd Hubbs, an agricultural economist and professor at OSU. A deal between the U.S. and China was made later to remedy the economic disruption, but Hubbs said the damage was already done as the window to buy was missed.
“For a good chunk of our normal export window, before the deal was made, they weren’t buying anything from us,” Hubbs said. “And so when they finally started buying, it was a little bit of a lag time to move all the beans. Our export number for this year (2025 growing season) was down quite a bit.”
In 2024, China purchased 985 million bushels of soybeans from the U.S., accounting for about half of the total U.S. soybean exports, according to the American Farm Bureau. In 2025, soybean exports to China fell to 218 million bushels.
The deal reached between the U.S. and China in late 2025 committed China to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January 2026, and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. The agreement, rather than increasing the amount sold, simply committed China to purchasing the same amount as before.
“The amount they agreed to buy, 25 million metric tons, that’s really what they normally bought from us,” Hubbs said. “It isn’t above and beyond what they normally did. Twenty-five million metric tons is about 920 million bushels, but it’s nice if they do it.”
The cost of fertilizer has remained a concern for soybean producers since the market changed drastically in 2021, following tariffs imposed on Moroccan and Russian fertilizer companies. The closing of a crucial waterway in response to the United States and Israel launching an attack on Iran’s defensive capabilities early this year has only further complicated the fertilizer market.
The closing of the Strait of Hormuz affects the overall demand of the fertilizer market, said Brian Arnall, a precision nutrient management extension specialist at OSU. Liquefied natural gas trade, which is required to create nitrogen-based fertilizers, previously passed through the strait at almost 20% globally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Anhydrous ammonia and urea, both nitrogen-based fertilizers, are the fertilizers used most in Oklahoma, Arnall said. Nitrogen-based fertilizers are not used on soybeans; however, a majority of soybean farmers also plant corn, wheat or other grains that benefit from nitrogen-based fertilizers. Rendel plants soybeans, winter wheat and corn.
“The rotation of crops in a system makes the system more healthy, more viable and more sustainable,” Arnall said. “Even though maybe I’m a soybean grower, I’m still going to have corn or wheat or sorghum at some point in the system, which needs nitrogen. So, a soybean farmer, they’ve still got nitrogen on their mind.”
Prices for nitrogen-based fertilizers began to rise after Iran declared the strait closed in early March, threatening to attack ships attempting to transport goods through the area, according to reports from the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
Although a ceasefire was reached between the U.S. and Iran in April, which outlined plans to halt military action and reopen the strait, conflict has continued into May between the military forces. Weeks worth of oil, gas, fertilizer and other globally needed goods remain backed up in the strait, the Associated Press reported.
Grain farmers are also affected by the price of phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers, which are commonly used for soybean production. Prices began rising after the U.S. Department of Commerce made a decision to enforce countervailing duty orders, or tariffs, on unliquidated entries of phosphate-based fertilizers imported from Morocco and Russia in 2021, according to the Federal Register. The countervailing duty orders — costs imposed on foreign industries in the amount of foreign government subsidy rates — were enforced to level the playing field for U.S. businesses.
Now, the Oklahoma Soybean Association, along with several other farming associations, is urging the International Trade Commission, which is under the Department of Commerce, to revoke the duty orders. A letter sent to the chair of the ITC in March stated the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient domestic phosphate resources to meet the demand. The limit on supply options has resulted in lower yields and negative economic returns, the letter claimed.
“CVDs (countervailing duty orders) have placed additional strain on farmers already navigating volatile commodity markets, weather uncertainty, and rising expenses across nearly every category of farm operations, and have impacted the affordability crisis that is so critical today,” the letter stated.
U.S. fertilizer companies have also started selling fertilizer overseas, which has created a reduced supply for American farmers, Arnall said.
“The factories can only produce so much at a time,” Arnall said. “And a lot of the phosphorus needs other products. Specifically, the phosphorus needs the sulfuric acids and the things that are byproducts of the oil and gas industry. The whole system is very cyclical and it’s all tied together.”
The duty orders simultaneously constrained international supply options, driving up fertilizer prices. A Texas A&M study estimated the duty orders increased costs for U.S. producers by about $6.9 billion from the 2021 to 2025 growing seasons.
“Fertilizer is a global trade, so everything that happens around the world significantly influences us and our fertilizer price,” Arnall said. “In the right marketplace, if our fertilizer was costing more, hopefully our grain and what we’re producing has greater value. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and our grain isn’t worth more, even though our inputs are costing more.”
The strait is crucial in global trade routes beyond fertilizer, accounting for the transportation of about 20 million barrels per day of petroleum products and crude oil in 2024 alone.
The largest input costs affecting Rendel’s farm operation are fertilizer and fuel, he said. Fuel prices, as well as fertilizer prices, are directly impacted by the closing of the strait, Hubbs said.
Crude oil, which is often transported through the strait, is the main ingredient in both diesel fuel and gasoline. Since the Iran war began and the strait closed, the price of regular gasoline has risen 52%, according to AP.
“We haven’t been hit as badly as some places, because we have a decent oil and gas industry,” Hubbs said. “We haven’t gotten into shortages, but the price is up, and it’s probably going to stay that way for a while. I’m not sure we’ve seen the worst of it because planting and driving those tractors, it’s an expense, and it just tightens the margins.”
Rendel said some farmers can prepay for fuel and fertilizer, but farms must have storage space and the luxury of available cash reserves, which are less common as input costs rise. Most are forced to buy fuel at current market prices, which are more than 1.5 times the normal price.
“If you drive, you are aware of what’s happened to the prices of fuel lately, and that hits farms, and it hits us double,” Rendel said. “It affects everybody, but with farms, the equipment that we use uses a significant amount of fuel. And then everything we obtain comes in large quantities, large trucks; they have to charge us more.”
Rising fuel costs added another expense to already thin profit margins, forcing farmers to find other ways to make ends meet.
Some farmers, like Rendel, received assistance from the Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which was primarily created to recover lost profits from the trade war with China. Other Oklahoma farmers turned toward the growing livestock market to offset losses from the grain industry.
The cattle industry generated about $5 billion in gross income for Oklahoma producers in 2024. Hogs and broilers brought in about $1 billion each. As a result, livestock purchases and feed were the main production costs in Oklahoma, according to USDA, which in turn helps crop farmers looking to sell their grains as feed.
“Oklahoma is blessed in that we’re a beef and crop state,” Arnall said. “For our Oklahoma producers, the cattle industry is really helping support the crop side, because we still need grains to grow beef. We still need grains to grow protein. We’ve seen a lot of the emphasis of the crop farmers putting more resources into the livestock side of the operations to offset those costs.”
Rendel remains a purely grain farm operation and said selling grains as feed to other farms in Oklahoma has helped him stay on his feet. But the cost of production for his grain will always affect his operation as it fluctuates.
Sooner rather than later, fertilizer costs may once again change. The enforcement of the duty orders on imports from Russia and Morocco is up for sunset review, as it has been five years since their implementation. The final decision from the ITC on whether the duty orders will remain is expected in spring 2027.
As a longtime farmer, Rendel said uncertainty has always existed in the agricultural industry and remaining flexible is the only way he has been able to survive.
“It’s all about things that I didn’t plan and responding to them,” Rendel said. “Things like wars, things like economic distress in other regions of the world, those are things I can’t control. All I can do is look at how is the best way to respond to them.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
