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West Central MN | Agriculture Secretary: A Year of Results—How the Trump Admin Put American Farmers First | Opinion
PUBLISHED
JAN 20, 2026 AT 02:06 PM EST
By Brooke L. Rollins
33rd Secretary of Agriculture
When President Donald J. Trump returned to office one year ago this week, he inherited one of the worst farm economies in decades. American farmers and ranchers were facing record input costs, volatile markets, lost trade opportunities and years of regulatory overreach that put bureaucracy ahead of producers.
That all changed on January 20, 2025.
That’s when this administration began to fulfill our promise to put American farmers first, restore common sense to government and rebuild a strong agricultural economy. This has been a long-awaited return to the founding vision of our nation. As Thomas Jefferson said in 1803, agriculture “is the first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect.”
Without a doubt, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is once again living out Jefferson’s vision. Over the past year I visited farmers and ranchers in over half of the states, and I heard firsthand how grateful they are for this administration’s decisive actions on their behalf.
Early 2025 saw us immediately working to curb highly pathogenic avian influenza. Our aim was to both better protect the poultry sector and lower egg prices for everyday consumers. A year later, we have surpassed expectations, as the industry has stabilized and egg prices have dropped more than 80 percent.
Within months the president signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—lowering taxes for farmers by a projected $10 billion or more. The bill permanently eliminated the death tax and made permanent helpful tax provisions to farmers such as the small business deduction and 100 percent immediate expensing. It also invested over $62 billion in the farm safety net and increased reference prices for producers for the first time in over a decade, including 15 percent for wheat, 11 percent for corn, 19 percent for soybeans and 14 percent for cotton. Moreover, the law put an emphasis not just on farmers, but on rural America more broadly. Notably, it invested $50 billion to improve health care in rural America through a new Rural Health Transformation Program.
Another boon for our farmers and ranchers has been President Trump’s trade wins, which expanded access for American agriculture products in over 24 key markets across the globe. As a result, corn exports were up 29 percent in 2025, and dairy exports were up 15 percent. This growth has been a lifeline for our producers, especially after four years under Joe Biden, who secured zero new trade deals.
While these trade deals will deliver long-term stability for farmers and ranchers in the future, USDA also offered $12 billion in farmer bridge payments to help producers in the interim while markets adjust, alongside $10 billion in emergency commodity assistance, $16 billion in supplemental disaster relief and more than $2 billion in livestock disaster assistance. USDA is also partnering with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to protect fair agricultural markets for feed, fertilizer, fuel, seed and equipment to ensure farmers and ranchers have competitive access to agricultural inputs.
We are respecting the American taxpayer and eliminating waste fraud and abuse. Across the U.S. government, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has saved an estimated $215 billion, amounting to $1,335 per taxpayer. For every new regulation added in the past year, the Trump administration has rescinded not one, not two, but 48 more. This is deregulation on a scale never seen in the history of America. We are finally getting government off people’s backs so that they can keep more of their hard-earned wages without government strangling their businesses.
And we are ensuring taxpayer dollars go to those who truly need them by boosting SNAP integrity and ensuring program dollars go to real food, not sugar sweetened beverages. Already, USDA has approved 18 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waivers to remove junk food from the program, exposed nearly $3 billion in fraud, strengthened work requirements for SNAP and invested $940 million to support food banks and access to nutritious food.
Just this month we released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, which encourage Americans to eat real food. Putting the healthy, affordable and abundant food produced by our farmers and ranchers at the center of the new food pyramid will not just Make America Heathy Again (MAHA) but open up huge markets for American agriculture. Last week, President Trump built upon these efforts by signing the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law. Twelve years after Michelle Obama led a short-sighted campaign to ditch whole milk in schools, and through this law our administration is sending a clear message: Whole milk is back.
Under President Trump, USDA is ushering in a new era of agricultural prosperity. We are rebuilding the industry from the ground up by putting farmers first, strengthening rural America and ensuring the United States remains the safest, most productive agricultural nation in the world.
These wins are worth celebrating, but as the president likes to say, the best is yet to come.
Brooke L. Rollins is the 33rd United States secretary of Agriculture. | |
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A Year of Results—How the Trump Admin Put American Farmers First
