LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – After President Trump released his 2027 budget proposal in early April, concerns started to stir up within the agriculture industry over the 5 billion dollars cut from their funding.
John Hansen has been the President of the Farmer’s Union of Nebraska for decades; an organization that started over a century ago.
He says farmers today are in crisis and the proposed budget cuts is only going to make things worse.
“We have good ag producers that have been tethering on the edge of break-even or not break-even,” he said.
“Right now, agriculture is in the worst economic downturn that it has experienced since the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and this crunch has been getting more severe year after year for the last four years or more.”
Hansen says much of it started with the unnecessary tariffs, which pushed some of the US’ biggest global customers, like China, to get their needs met elsewhere.
President Trump’s budget proposal for 2027 says the plan for rural America is to delegate funds for reorganization efforts the USDA.
An excerpt from the proposal states, “Relocating many of the USDA’s headquarter employees to regional hubs will bring USDA closer to the Americans it serves and eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic layers; homing in on the administration’s priority to increase the efficiency of the federal government.”
Hansen is pushing for another solution.
“We are dismantling our own United States Department of Agriculture,” said Hansen. “A year ago, we lost 15,000 members of our USDA workforce. That was an enormous hit. That 15,000 workers was 14% of the total workforce or more, and now we’re seeing additional cuts in this budget on top of the huge DOJ cuts of a year ago,” said Hansen.
He adds, “We’re seeing additional cuts to Farm Service Administration, which still delivers and administers the farm programs that we increasingly depend on and need today.”
Specifically, local food production programs that go from farm to school, farm to food bank and food assistance programs.
In a press release, speaker of the house Mike Johnson expressed high hopes for the proposal saying it puts Americans first by “codifying monumental tax relief for working families, seniors, farmers and rural communities and small businesses.”
Overall, the 2027 proposal plans to cut nearly 5 billion dollars from the USDA compared to 2026.
If you would like to follow the work of the Farmer’s Union you can visit their website here.
To review the President’s 2027 budget proposal, you can access it here.
