Farmers across rural America are sounding the alarm, warning that the Iran war could cause prices at the grocery store to skyrocket.
John Bartman, a corn and soybean farmer from Illinois, joined MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday’s “The 11th Hour” to explain how the conflict, which has disrupted fertilizer shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, could affect the food supply here at home.
“Very simply, we need fertilizer in order to grow food. It’s just that simple,” Bartman told Ruhle.
More than one-third of the world’s fertilizer trade moves through the Strait of Hormuz, and fertilizer prices are already rising.
According to Bartman, this could hit America’s farmers hard. “What this really amounts to is a $4 billion tax to corn farmers in the United States — an increase, thanks to Donald Trump,” he said.
Ruhle described the situation as part of a “one-two punch” from the administration, as many farmers are still grappling with the effects of the president’s tariffs.
Bartman said many in his industry are suffering through an economic crisis, which he expects to worsen if the war continues. “The American Farm Bureau this year said that every single commodity that we grow in the United States is unprofitable,” he told Ruhle. “And this is just adding to it.”
The farmer added: “We as farmers are suffering the collateral damage from this, and farm bankruptcies are going through the roof right now.”
With no end to the war in sight, Bartman said it’s the American people who will pay the price. “Unfortunately, the senior citizens who are sitting at home and people on fixed incomes are going to see higher prices for their food this year,” he said.
Bartman said America’s farmers “don’t want a bailout.” Instead, he said, they simply want “to take our product, put it in the market and sell it and make money off of it.”
“If they [Congress] really wanted to get something done … they would advance policies that increase our demand,” he told Ruhle.
Bartman criticized the president for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, which historically had purchased billions in food aid from American farmers.
“Right now, there’s 33 million people in Sudan who are suffering severe hunger,” he said. “And if those people at USAID were able to take our grain that we have, that billion bushels of wheat that’s just sitting there in our ending stocks right now, and give that flour to overseas, that would make a huge difference. It would give us a leg up and [help us] be able to make some money as a farmer, and we’d be able to have soft power again.”
Bartman added: “We would be the good guys in the world again — and maybe wouldn’t be in Iran right now.”
You can watch Bartman’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”