Even as a kid, I knew we had weather to beat if we wanted a good harvest. So when the tractor hit the straightaway in our valley – where our family had plowed a living for four generations – I always popped it up a gear. The dust flew and I was dog tired, but smiling.

Harvest time holds both hope and exhaustion for farm families. An entire year of work, making or breaking our finances. And each year gets harder.

Now, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to remake the American economy with massive tariffs, he has a central challenge coming from the heartland that gave him so much support: Get tough on trade, without finishing off farmers. The reality is, after losing 70% of our farms in the past century, today we’re at a troubling tipping point – for the first time, at risk of wiping out our domestic food supply within a generation. We can also revive it.

Killing off American family farms while being reliant on foreign food

The situation is shockingly dystopian: We’re killing off America’s family farms while becoming overreliant on foreign food. In 2025, we’re projected to have a record agricultural trade deficit – importing $42.5 billion more than we’re exporting, when we should be supplying America’s food and selling excess abroad.

To be clear, one of the many problems driving rural decline – after a century of economic, technological and political reasons under both parties – is unfair trade. Letting it go for decades left farmers in an anti-competitive environment against countries with cheaper labor. And China became a massive customer willing to suddenly drop purchases, depressing prices while holding America hostage.

The last Trump administration’s policies led to a farmland reaction that puzzled many, but shouldn’t have. Polling showed most farmers supporting tariffs, even though most reported harm as retaliatory tariffs from other countries made their goods more expensive abroad and sent sales plummeting.

The reason: Farmers knew they had been getting screwed for decades, so they viewed it as short-term pain for long-term gain.

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Today both parties have backed off new markets, while blaming the other. Regardless, the even more fragile state of American farming and tangle of global trade problems – both unfair standards hurting farmers and a drop in trade hurting farmers – mean America needs a policy that toughens standards while simultaneously encouraging more trade.

How? Threaten the sledgehammer, but use the scalpel.

Trump is in the unique position of the world already taking his tariff threats seriously. He should use it as leverage, but in a targeted trade strategy that knocks down trade barriers without accepting the false choice between the freewheeling trade of the 1990s or destroying struggling farmers’ income. We can both draw a hard line and protect farmers from foreign retaliation.

One part of a targeted trade strategy is pursuing narrower deals where America can better exert its leverage. Stephanie Mercier, an economist with the Farm Journal Foundation, told me deals around a specific product in a specific country can open markets for farmers, with fewer trade-offs than deals involving many products across multiple countries.  

The other part of targeted trade is demanding accountability, including removing inconsistent trade policies – a task that’s also easier if America uses leverage to negotiate targeted deals with individual countries.

One example is inconsistent seasonal restrictions.

Michigan farmers aren’t allowed to sell asparagus into foreign markets during those countries’ prime season. But the same isn’t required of those countries, meaning Michigan farmers compete with foreign asparagus all year, as Jamie Clover Adams of Michigan Asparagus told the Business of Agriculture podcast.

Why shouldn’t both countries be required to import only part of the year?

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We must get trade right or risk wiping out remaining family farms

If America pursues a targeted strategy, we can emerge with a tougher trade stance and a large number of small trade deals with clearer benefits for America.

Alternatively, if America loses control of negotiations, retaliation against American exports will wipe out more struggling farms. 

We must get this right, now. More Americans than ever care about where their food comes from, meaning there’s an opportunity for new markets in the United States. But that will take time and a lot of change, and continuing the current trend – 45,000 lost per year on average for a century – means wiping out most of our remaining family farms in 40 years.

Looking back, the best part of harvest was sunset, gold settling into oranges and purples, signaling the last few hours of work. But part of the reason was I thought it would always give way to a new day – the sun also rising, as Ernest Hemingway wrote.

The problem is the sun setting on the American farmer has long been threatening permanent black night. Let’s make sure it rises again.

Brian Reisinger is a writer who grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He contributes columns and videos for the Ideas Lab at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where this column originally appeared. He is the author of“Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.” You can find him on X: @BrianJReisinger