Tennessee row crop farmers face changing global market after two years in the red

Tennessee row crop farmers lost hundreds of millions of dollars on their harvests in 2024 and 2025. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

Row crop farmers that have been the backbone of Tennessee’s agriculture industry for several decades are now navigating seismic shifts in global markets after two years of “staggering” losses.

If Tennessee wants to see agriculture survive as one of its top industries, the state will need to support creative ways to help farmers keep their operations profitable, Tennessee Department of Agriculture Commissioner Andy Holt told members of the state Senate’s agriculture and commerce committees Wednesday.

A combination of high input costs, storms, drought, high interest rates, geopolitical changes, trade disruption during tariff negotiations and lower commodity prices was a “recipe for disaster,” Holt said.

Producers of cotton, soybeans, corn, and a wheat and soybean combination ended 2025 with a combined $192 million loss, according to estimates from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. The university initially estimated a combined loss of $476 million, but the loss was partially offset by federal aid and crop insurance payments.

That’s on top of an estimated combined loss of $298 million in 2024.

“This problem is so large, there is no single solution. There is no government, whether state or federal, that can cure the economic loss that has occurred over the last couple of years,” Holt said.

In addition to continuing its cost-sharing programs, the state’s agriculture department is pursuing programs to help producers diversify the products on their farms, find emerging international markets to sell to, and improve infrastructure to make it easier for producers to get their products to international customers.

Shifting international demand

For decades, farmers benefited from steady export demand from Pacific Rim countries eager to consume soybeans, grain and cotton from the United States.

“That has had a shelf life of about 30 to 35 years, but we live in a very dangerous world now … and things are changing,” Stefan Maupin, executive director of the Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council, said during the meeting. 

Soybeans are Tennessee’s leading row crop.

Marketing decisions are increasingly difficult for farmers, Maupin said, sharing the story of one farmer who set his market plan before leaving for a vacation and lost tens of thousands of dollars when Russia invaded Ukraine, flipping the international market on its head.

“Most people in Tennessee don’t realize that your neighbor who’s farming down the road was dramatically impacted by an “(international) event,” Maupin said.

China, the United States’ biggest customer for exported soybeans, has increasingly turned to South America to fulfill its needs over the last few years amid trade disputes with the United States.

President Donald Trump reached a trade agreement with China late last year, with China agreeing to purchase at least 25 million metric tons each year from 2026 through 2028. For comparison, China purchased an average of 29 million metric tons of soybeans from the United States each year between 2020 and 2024, according to public policy think tank The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Brazil is nipping on the heels of the United States as the bread basket of the Western Hemisphere, where we were unquestionably the bread basket of the Western Hemisphere for the last 100 years,” Holt said. “Brazil has certainly taken over a market position that — not to say we didn’t expect (it) — but we really probably did not expect it to occur this quickly.”

Tennessee ranks 22nd in the nation for agricultural exports, sending $2.77 billion in agriculture and forestry products to other countries in 2024. Holt wants to see Tennessee move into the top 10 over the next five years, “so that we have more opportunity to sell what we’re producing.”

He said Tennessee’s hardwood timber industry saw high returns when it focused on marketing a single good to a single emerging international market, and wants to replicate that model in partnership with national export councils for soybeans, grain and cotton.

Infrastructure and bioenergy products

Maupin and Holt both identified state support for infrastructure as a major immediate need for row crop farmers, particularly those in West Tennessee, which has the greatest concentration of soybean production.

To export their crops, farmers must first get them to barges on the Mississippi River. That becomes more difficult when one of the few roads available to transport goods to the river are flooded, Holt said. 

In Dyer County, a short, flood-prone roadway called Bungie Road represents the last two miles to get crops from fields to a grain elevator on the river’s edge to get to international markets.

TN Soybean farmers face ‘desperate situation’ amid inflation, weather extremes and tariffs

“This is probably the most important infrastructure need that we have in the state at the moment,” Holt said. “We can produce all the grain we want, but if we can’t get it into a domestic or an international market, then we’re going to limit ourselves.”

Maupin said his organization has been trying to get the state to contribute a few million dollars to move the road out of the floodplain for the last seven or eight years, to no avail.

“Any state likes to look at the new, big thing that comes around, and it should be — we need to be creating those jobs,” Maupin said. “But we can’t forget infrastructure for the entities that have always existed.”

Both also advocated for more short-line railroad infrastructure. 

Holt said the agriculture department would like to see an oil crushing facility — where soybeans are separated into oil and meal — in Tennessee. Crush facilities are under construction in several states that used to send their soybeans to other countries for processing. The oil can be used for biofuels, for industrial uses, and in food.

Tennessee uses about 46% of its corn to produce ethanol at three plants in the state, but has yet to gain ground in other bioenergy industries. High domestic demand for biofuels is being driven by Western states including California, Washington and Oregon, due to their environmental policies.

“We think oil crushing is an opportunity for us to advance, especially if we can get the (Environmental Protection Agency) … to realign their focus on the renewable fuel standards,” Holt said. “We need to be able to take Tennessee crops and convert those into energy resources that we can sell.