Fed-Up Farmers Fueled a 'Blue Wave,' Says Former Ag Chair Peterson

Democrats headed to Capitol Hill in January owe part of their majority to farmers who ran out of patience, according to former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, who served 15 terms as a Minnesota Democrat before losing his 2020 reelection bid to GOP Rep. Michelle Fischbach.

"We have a real opportunity in rural America because of this election," Peterson told Agri-Pulse in a phone interview Wednesday. He has long worried that Democrats' disappearance from farming districts left Congress unable to function on agriculture.

Can one party run farm policy alone?

Peterson, a centrist, argues it cannot. "You can't run farm policy on just one party. If you do that, you're going to end up going back and forth and farmers are going to get whipsawed," he said.

Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., made the same point from the market side. "Rural America voting exclusively red is a very dangerous policy because then you get taken for granted, and you saw that with what happened with tariffs, what happened with our markets, what happened with our input costs beyond even tariff-related input costs," she said in a phone interview. She said she hopes the election brings "a reset for ag policy that will bring it back to bipartisanship."

Peterson pointed to Democratic victories in ag-heavy states like Iowa as a message to the White House. "People are sick and tired of this chaos and partisanship and back and forth," he said, noting President Donald Trump's final preelection event Tuesday was at the reflecting pool in Washington. "I think farmers got just fed up with it, some of them — enough to change the election."

Voter frustration, in short, is now a variable in commodity policy.

What happens to the stalled farm bill?

Lawmakers return Monday with Senate and House Agriculture committee leaders from both parties vowing to pass a farm bill this year. It remains unclear whether Democrats will wait and restart work on the already delayed bill next year, when they control both chambers.

The immediate obstacle is SNAP. Senate Republicans and Democrats are deadlocked over how long to delay cost shifts to states under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program:

• Republicans offer a one-year delay, which Senate Ag Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., calls their best and final offer.
• Democrats, led by ranking member Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, want two years.
• The gap threatens to derail the legislation.

Peterson's advice to Boozman: take the two-year deal. He compared the standoff to the SNAP fight in the 2018 farm bill, also a midterm year in which Democrats retook the House. But he added a caveat — even if Boozman concedes the delay, Democrats fresh off the election "may not want to go along with it." His bottom line: lawmakers should "sit down and work this thing out and get the farm bill done and get it locked into place for a while so that we can have some certainty."

Boozman said Wednesday he remains determined. "Family farmers contending with numerous challenges to their viability cannot afford another farm bill delay," he said. "I remain committed to helping get them signed into law this year."

Did Trump's aid payments distort the farm economy?

Peterson also flagged a margin problem lawmakers created themselves. Trump directed billions of dollars in support to farmers struggling with high fuel and input costs, and Peterson said that money "took the pressure off" Congress while "driving up the pricing of land and inputs." In his view, "it's not really solving any problem."

Subsidy checks, in other words, moved into asset prices rather than fixing farm economics.

Despite that, Peterson is optimistic that more Democrats representing rural districts will force a bipartisan restart, at least on agriculture. "It's going to force Democrats and the Republicans to work together if they want to get anything done," he said — warning that if they don't, Republicans will win the seats back next cycle: "We can't just have one party control all the seats in farm country and rural America."

The test comes Monday, when the farm bill's fate lands back in the hands of a lame-duck Congress.