Trump’s USDA Pivots From Big Meat to Feed and Fertilizer Prices

The Trump administration is making changes to the Department of Agriculture’s approach to consolidation. The White House has announced a partnership between USDA and the Department of Justice to promote competitive pricing on inputs for farmers, including feed, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. But the announcement follows an announcement to withdraw from a Biden-era agreement with over 30 state attorneys general to combat consolidation across the entire supply chain. The focus on feed and other input pricing may be a bid to appeal to President Trump’s farmer constituents, especially soybean farmers and others unhappy with Trump’s tariff policies.

Counties with more than a quarter of their annual earnings coming from agriculture turned out for Trump in the 2024 election. On average around 78 percent of those county residents voted for Trump. The USDA’s website currently sports a banner with the words “Radical Left Democrat shutdown,” like other federal websites, but also includes a pledge to “support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people” since the ongoing shutdown started October 1.

In the summer of 2024, the Biden USDA announced guidelines aimed at stronger standards for meat label claims, including antibiotic use or climate-friendly claims. President Trump’s policies seem to encourage competitiveness in the market in very specific ways — for feed and fertilizer, inputs farmers need for their business, or price-fixing by egg producers, which followed a campaign pledge to bring the price of eggs down.

These Trump-era policies will likely allow the largest meat conglomerates to continue business as usual. Basel Musharbash, an attorney with the law firm Antimonopoly Counsel tells Sentient that companies like JBS and Pilgrim’s Pride often engage in predatory behavior, including buying up smaller competitors that tout sustainable practices, only to use those brands to greenwash the practices of the larger corporation.

Today, just four companies control over 80 percent of the U.S. beef sector. “Basically three dozen corporations today can dictate who gets to farm and how they farm, what food gets produced and sold in this country,” Musharbash tells Sentient. And this consolidated power comes at great cost, Musharbash argues, for rural economies and consumers everywhere.

Regulating Anticompetitive Behavior, from Biden to Trump

The Biden administration’s USDA launched the Agricultural Competition Partnership in 2022, citing a desire to boost competition in agriculture markets. As part of the agreement, the USDA and state attorneys general had access to funding to expand collaborative antitrust efforts, including lawsuits brought by states attorneys general to challenge anti-competitive behavior.

“State attorneys general have limited resources for antitrust enforcement for a variety of reasons,” Musharbash says. “They just need as much funding as they can get for these activities.”

On September 25, Secretary Rollins announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Department of Justice geared toward protecting “American farmers and ranchers from the burdens imposed by high and volatile input costs — such as feed, fertilizer, fuel, seed, equipment, and other essential goods,” according to a press release from the department.

Whereas the Biden-era agreement supported efforts to combat anticompetitive behavior at every stage of the food system, the new agreement is more focused on costs for inputs like pesticides and seeds.

“During the Biden administration, they had a broader focus, and that’s why the USDA did investigations during the previous administration dealing with fertilizer and the seed and pesticide industries,” Musharbash tells Sentient. “I don’t know that there’s a shift in focus, so much as maybe a heavier focus on these input sectors.”

In August, President Trump revoked a Biden-era order aimed at strengthening enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act aimed at increasing competitiveness in the livestock industry. But with this latest directive from USDA, “they’re putting part of it back into place with respect to the input industries,” says Musharbash, a move that he fully supports.

Sentient reached out to the USDA for comment on the apparent shift of tactic, but was directed to the agency’s press release on the new MOU’s announcement.

In Rural Communities, Farm Numbers Dwindle While Remaining Operations Expand

Consolidation has literally changed the landscape in rural communities. According to the most recent agricultural census carried out in 2022, the number of farms in the United States dropped by more than 140,000 (7 percent), since 2017. As some farmers sold or abandoned their farms, the biggest operations got bigger. During the same time period, the number of farms with 5000 acres or more increased by over 1300 while the number of all smaller farm sizes dropped.

A lack of competition in the agriculture industry, whether at the farm or processor level, results in both higher prices for all consumers and lower incomes in rural communities, says Musharbash. “Consolidation takes money out of the pockets of farmers and producers,” he tells Sentient, referring to the smaller operations. “The money that previously used to stay in small towns and rural communities to provide local business and local industry is now extracted.”

Mushbarash likens the current state of consolidation within agriculture to “central planning” — an economic term that refers to consolidation of decision-making about production in a central government body. “It raises serious questions about the liberty of people to make their own choices, to start their own businesses in the food system,” he says. The ongoing trend towards consolidation, argues Mushbarash, “raises serious questions about our ability to govern our food economy in the public interest instead of the interest of a few investors, financiers, executives.”