A Look At the Ag-Economy

April 8, 2026·19 min·1 clip

79% of American farmland is owned by non-farmers, with landlords collecting $34 billion in rental income last year.

This is a solo commentary episode from host Doug Stephan of the American Family Farmer. He opens by noting that farming has always been economically challenging, citing a childhood memory of a dairy farmer who sold his cows in the 1960s and lost his spirit. Stephan frames the current agricultural crisis as a compounding of pre-existing pressures — including a 20,000-person reduction in agricultural labor — with the added burden of wartime fuel costs. He cites diesel prices of $7.26 per gallon in California and fuel oil above $4 per gallon nationally, and notes that fertilizer costs are also rising. Research from agricultural colleges, he says, suggests 50 percent of US farmers are at risk of going out of business. He reviews five priorities announced by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins: deregulation, new trade deals, lower input costs, biofuel market expansion, and a stronger farm safety net. He expresses skepticism about several, pointing out that a new Indonesia beef trade deal coincided with $40 billion of Argentinian and Brazilian beef entering the US market. He calls the lower input costs priority effectively moot given current fertilizer and fuel prices. Moving to farmland ownership, Stephan cites USDA data: 79 percent of US farmland is owned by non-farming landlords; these landlords collected $34 billion in rental income last year on land valued at nearly $2 trillion, up roughly 47 percent over the past decade. 52 percent of landlords have never farmed; 40 percent inherited their land. He raises concerns about foreign — specifically Chinese — ownership of US farmland. He notes that nearly 340.8 million acres were rented last year and that 5 percent of farmland is expected to change hands in the next five years. Stephan then provides historical context, tracing the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act under Roosevelt's New Deal, which paid farmers to reduce production and destroy surplus crops. He notes this approach has been repeated multiple times, including with tobacco farmers. He warns that if the current war continues for two to three more months, grocery store shelves could empty as they did during COVID, and advises non-farming listeners to find local farm sources of dairy and produce before that occurs. He closes by highlighting a USDA public comment period on renewable fuel standards, open until April 9th.

As heard by us

Who owns the land is the episode's real pressure point.

American Family Farmer centers on one plain question: who owns the land. Doug Stephan moves from a Vermont maple syrup operation to USDA farmland figures, then into the strain family farms face from war and the pressure that puts on the food supply.

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Why you'd press play

You want the land math behind farm-policy headlines.

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