Brookland, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Sept. 2, 2025 – Hundreds of Northeast Arkansas farmers gathered to discuss current farming concerns with government officials Tuesday morning in a town hall meeting.
Panelists included Southern Bancorp market president Paul McAnally, Cameron Bandy with U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s office, Joshua Mullinax with U.S. Sen. John Boozman’s office, and Gene Higginbotham and Charles Landrum with U.S. Congressman Rick Crawford’s office. The meeting took place at Woods Chapel Church family center in Brookland.
During the town hall, the attendees asked panelists what actions are being discussed to address farming crises, which include high production costs, decreased commodity prices for crops, tariffs, and severe weather leading to increased bankruptcies, according to reporting from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
McAnally, a fourth-generation farmer and banker of 25 years, said that 2025 was the first year he’d seen where no workable row crop budget could be built.
“Agriculture is Arkansas’ largest industry, contributing $16 billion annually to the state’s economy. Row crop farmers make up a large share of this impact and are the backbone of rural communities and small businesses,” McAnally said. “The current situation is that since 2023, row crop farmers have suffered net losses due to high input costs and low commodity prices. Many have restructured operations, depleted equity, and relied heavily on banks just to remain in business. 2025 marks the first year in 25 years of crop financing where no workable budget exists for row crops under current price/cost conditions.”
He added that on April 3, officials discussed the federal government’s Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), which was supposed to provide $20 billion, however, it decreased to $10 billion in direct payments nationwide.
McAnally said while ECAP provided $10 billion in payments for 2024 losses, it was spread thin and capped, covering only a fraction of actual needs. He also noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act payments will not arrive until November 2026, too late for many Arkansas farmers.
According to McAnally, Arkansas farmers need federal bridge-gap funding by Feb. 1, 2026, beyond the ECAP and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to prevent catastrophic loss of family farms.
“I was requesting that we urge Gov. Sanders and Secretary Ward to petition President Trump and Secretary Rollins directly for this critical relief,” he said, concluding that without immediate gap funding, Arkansas will face the largest wave of farm bankruptcies in a generation, endangering not only farmers but also the rural economy.
During the meeting several area farmers and agri-business representatives also expressed their concerns about the crisis.
Farmer Jerry Morgan noted all the flooding this year and how it had affected the production of their crops as well as their and their friends’ livelihoods.
“It’s not just the farmers. It trickles down through all the people that help us on the farm,” he said, noting that, while the payments might help some, it will still be too late for a lot of people by the time they arrive.
Jill Beck, who finances ag equipment, said that through her work in the last several months she had heard of an alarming number of farmers who had committed suicide.
“It is serious. These men and women are out in isolated areas going through all of these numbers in their head, working on something that they owe a lot of money on or on a piece of land that they owe a lot of money on or have rented for a lot of money,” Beck said. “The fact that they have the weight of ‘I might be losing the farm because of this situation’ and all the generations before them are standing on their shoulders.”
Higginbotham said after the meeting: “Honestly, the Congressmen understand all the farmers are really hurting this year. So, they get that, and then the turnout reflects that,” he said, noting that the next step was to get the information they had gathered up to Washington D.C. and let the Congressmen get to work on it.
