American farmers are getting desperate as cheap foreign rice flood into the U.S.

Farmers warn the crisis is personal

American rice farmers say they can no longer afford to keep going. Cheap foreign rice keeps flooding the U.S. market, prices have collapsed, and costs keep climbing.

Many families who have grown rice for generations are walking away or taking on crushing debt.

A fifth-generation Louisiana rice farmer told NewsNation that farmers are quitting, and newcomers can’t get started without major family support. For many, the question isn’t how much they’ll make.

It’s whether they’ll still be farming next year.

Losses hit hundreds per acre

The numbers paint a grim picture. U.S. rice prices dropped about 37% from early 2024 to mid-2025.

University of Illinois economists estimate American rice farmers lost about $446 per acre in 2025.

The American Farm Bureau Federation put average losses at roughly $364 per acre, the second-highest among major row crops behind cotton.

Rice already costs more to grow than any other major field crop, with total production costs running about $1,308 per acre. Operating costs alone topped $764 per acre last year.

American rice costs more to grow

The United States grows less than 2% of the world’s rice but has long been a top exporter, shipping roughly 40% to 45% of its harvest overseas. That sounds strong, but the economics are tough.

A March 2025 report from the U.S. International Trade Commission found that the U.S. has some of the highest rice production costs in the world.

Countries like India, Pakistan, and Vietnam grow rice for far less, giving their exports a big price advantage. American rice carries the highest costs for seed, fertilizer, and hired labor among all major field crops.

Imports hit record levels in 2025

Foreign rice imports hit a record of about 1.51 million metric tons in 2025, displacing more than $1.5 billion in domestic sales over the past decade.

Thailand supplies about 65% of long-grain imports, mostly jasmine rice, while India accounts for more than 20%, mostly basmati.

Imports have grown from about 7% of the domestic market in the early 1990s to more than 25% today. American shoppers increasingly prefer those aromatic imported varieties, which U.S. growers generally don’t produce.

India keeps breaking its own records

India set a record rice harvest for the tenth straight year and recently overtook China as the world’s largest rice producer for the first time since the late 1940s.

Global rice supplies hit a record of about 730.7 million tons in the 2025/26 season, the third year in a row of growing surpluses.

The USA Rice Federation says India’s government subsidies and minimum support prices shield Indian farmers from global price drops while flooding the export market.

World rice trade in 2026 is on track to reach a record of about 62.8 million tons.

The tariff fight cuts both ways

The U.S. rice industry wants higher import tariffs on foreign rice, targeting what it calls unfair practices by Thailand, India, China, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

The USA Rice Federation asked the U.S. Trade Representative to launch a Section 301 investigation and impose a rice-specific import tariff. But tariffs cut both ways.

The EU and Canada both hit U.S. rice with 25% retaliatory tariffs in 2025, hurting American exports. Farmers want protection from cheap imports while also needing open markets for their own shipments abroad.

Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs

On Feb. 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that tariffs President Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were unlawful.

The court said IEEPA does not give the president power to set tariffs.

Trump quickly replaced them with a 15% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, but that authority is capped at 150 days unless Congress extends it.

The ruling raised questions about whether trade deals negotiated under IEEPA authority, including farm provisions, still hold.

China pulled back from U.S. crops

Rice isn’t the only crop hurting. China bought about 53% of U.S. soybean exports in recent years, but shipments fell sharply from January through August 2025. The drop in sorghum was even steeper.

China purchased more than 83% of U.S. sorghum exports from 2020 to 2024, but 2025 exports to China fell 97%.

USDA projects U.S. farm exports to China will drop to just $9 billion in 2026, the lowest since the 2018 trade war. Brazil and Argentina stepped in to fill the gap.

Government payments cover a fraction of losses

The Trump administration announced $12 billion in farmer aid in December 2025, with $11 billion going to row crop farmers through the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program.

Rice got the highest per-acre payment at about $133, but that covers only about a third of the projected $364 loss per acre.

The American Soybean Association said the payments wouldn’t cover the real financial damage farmers took in 2025.

Longer-term help through enhanced Price Loss Coverage and Agricultural Risk Coverage in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act won’t kick in until October 2026.

Iran conflict sends fertilizer prices surging

The war in Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly a third of globally traded fertilizer passes.

U.S. urea fertilizer prices jumped about 30% in one week in early March 2026, according to data from The Fertilizer Institute.

The American Farm Bureau Federation warned the White House on March 9 that fertilizer and fuel costs have surged, making an existing farm income crisis worse.

Farmers who didn’t buy fertilizer last fall may struggle to afford supplies for spring planting. One bright spot: a 2025 Japan trade deal boosted Japanese rice purchases from the U.S. by 75%.

Arkansas rice acreage could hit a 40-year low

Arkansas, the country’s top rice-producing state, harvested about 160,000 fewer rice acres in 2025, a drop of more than 12% from 2024.

AgHeritage Farm Credit Services estimates the state’s rice acreage could fall to between 900,000 and 925,000 acres in 2026, which would be the lowest level since 1983.

Arkansas also led the nation in Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings last year with 33 cases, more than double the year before. Across the country, farm bankruptcies rose 46% in 2025.

Some farmers are switching to soybeans or corn, which cost less to grow but face their own market troubles.

Debt keeps climbing with no fix in sight

Total U.S. farm debt is on track to rise about 5.2% to a record of roughly $625 billion in 2026. Losses across the farming sector have piled up to more than $50 billion over the past three crop years.

Rice industry leaders say the real fix isn’t government checks but fair trade rules and tariffs that stop what they call the dumping of subsidized foreign rice.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s enhanced Price Loss Coverage for rice should start payments in late 2026, giving some farmers a reason to hold on.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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