'Played for suckers': Kansas agriculture expert chides fellow farmers who voted for Trump

Multiple stories in recent days have highlighted the turmoil that President Donald Trump's policies of steep tariffs and the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development have been bringing American farmers.

Ben Palen, a Kansas farmer and agricultural consultant, has written a column for the Kansas Reflector in which he chides his fellow farmers for being "played for suckers" by the president during the 2024 campaign.

Specifically, Palen accuses Trump-backing farmers in the state of failing to do their homework about exactly what his policy proposals would mean for them.

He takes particular aim at Trump's decision to launch trade wars with longtime allies who buy large amounts of American agricultural goods.

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"We are now living and working in an environment where the only constant is chaos," he explains. "Chaos produces uncertainty, and that leads to loss of trust. The buyers of U.S. farm products are not going to deal with nations that cannot be trusted. There are plenty of options in today’s world for those buyers to bypass the United States. Why on God’s green earth would they put up with the insanity that we have in Washington now?"

He also zeroes in on all of the agencies and programs that X owner Elon Musk is unilaterally shutting down without any input from the United States Congress.

"The Climate Smart programs designed to help farmers monetize carbon reduction practices on their farms are going away," he writes. "The future of the 45Z tax credit is, well, who knows? What about export assistance programs urgently needed to help U.S. farmers counter the effects of the Trump tariffs and the rise of our global competitors, such as Brazil and India? And how about the price subsidies that featured prominently in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s farm support programs? What happens when the NOAA is defunded?"

He concludes his column by urging farmers to put aside their political tribalism and realize that the trajectory Trump has put the nation on is unsustainable.

"My fellow farmers — you’ve been played," he writes. "This nation cannot exist as an island. But that is the path that this administration is on, and the onus is on responsible folks from all political persuasions to find common ground to stop this madness."