American ranchers wrestle with soaring costs - and their loyalty to Trump

**American ranchers grapple with rising costs — and their loyalty to Trump**

Rancher Yvette Mannon was already facing a devastating wildfire and higher fuel prices before the US announced new foreign beef imports.

Nebraska rancher Yvette Mannon was already having a difficult year.

In April, a wildfire wiped out 1,600 grazing acres and 13 miles (21 km) of fencing on the ranch she purchased in 2002. The property sits in a corner of Nebraska known for rolling green hills beneath broad Midwestern skies, with grain silos and feedlots scattered among endless fields of cattle.

Mannon’s 300 cattle survived the fire, but the fencing had to be rebuilt and the herd still needed feeding.

With steel prices at their highest in years, and heavily affected by tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump, that meant paying $4.89 a foot — for a bill of more than $300,000.

On top of that, because so much productive grazing land had been lost, Mannon also needed a tractor out every day to bring hay to her cattle — at a time when diesel prices, surging because of the Iran War, were more than 40% higher than the year before.

Then in August, the Trump administration said it would bring in 300,000 metric tons of duty-free foreign beef in an effort to reduce consumer prices. The announcement came just before the September-November period when most US calves are weaned and sold.

The cattle market dropped sharply right away.

“So we’re ‘Buy American’, ‘Let’s Make America Great,’” said Mannon, 63, who voted for Trump. “But for you guys over here, sorry.”

“It just felt like a betrayal,” she said.

Many farmers and ranchers across the US say they are being squeezed from every direction. The past few years have been hard, with drought hurting crops and cattle herds already at historically low levels. But they say government policies have made the pressure worse.

That has led some in Nebraska, which overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the last election, to rethink their political loyalties.

Dan Osborn, an independent candidate running against Trump-backed Republican Pete Ricketts, is polling surprisingly well ahead of November’s Senate race.

Republicans appear well aware of the anger and frustration among farmers. In recent weeks, both Trump and Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen have announced relief measures aimed at lowering fuel costs for farmers and ranchers, who say they have been struggling for months.

The Iran War has sent diesel and fertiliser prices soaring — both essential for farm operations. Tariffs have pushed up machinery costs and repairs, as well as steel and lumber prices.

And Trump administration decisions — whether importing foreign beef or opening the southern border to Mexican cattle — have sent already volatile markets into overdrive.

Many producers are losing hundreds of dollars per head of cattle.

“All of this hit cattle markets, as a whole, negatively,” said James Mitchell, an assistant professor and agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas.

He said cattle markets move in 10-12 year cycles, with good years and bad ones. The industry recently enjoyed a particularly profitable stretch, when low supply and strong demand lifted prices. But now, the market is clearly heading downward.

Jake Wolfinger, 45, has been riding out the slump at his feedlot near Lexington, Nebraska. He and his wife are both from Ohio and come from multi-generational farming families. They moved to Nebraska — with its rich land and the nation’s most groundwater — to build a life on their own.

Jake Wolfinger, 45, says he is frustrated with Trump’s intervention in the beef market — but believes the President

The Wolfingers bought a rundown feedlot in 2010 and have transformed it into a sophisticated operation with 5,500 cattle. Neighbours point to them as proof of what hard work can still achieve in a difficult industry.

But Wolfinger did not account for the Iran War, tariffs or foreign beef imports in his planning.

“Things were just chumming along pretty good,” he said, selling cattle for $240 per hundredweight — but that has fallen to $225. That may not sound like much, but it can mean a loss of potentially hundreds of dollars per animal.

Wolfinger is also dealing with extremely high diesel costs, with some equipment burning through 400-gallon tanks a day.

“It really makes a guy think,” he said.

A Trump supporter, Wolfinger said he voted for the president because “we needed his spirit in this country”. He also voiced frustration with what he called “woke DEI” policies on the left.

But he is unhappy with the president’s intervention in the beef market.

“People need to stay the hell out of farmers’ business, because it’s harvest time,” Wolfinger said.

Forty miles northwest, near Callaway, Nebraska, 54-year-old Duane Kimball stands in his shed surrounded by machinery — and a huge Trump banner on one wall.

“The daily upcharge… is kind of painful,” he said.

“I know a lot of people have had to go back to their banks and increase their lines of credit.”

Kimball thought the Iran War would have ended long ago.

But he does not blame Trump for all of his financial troubles. “To pin that on this administration, I don’t think is a fair assessment,” he said.

He pointed to burdensome regulations and the rising cost of machinery and fertiliser — trends that began before Trump returned to the White House.

“I know a lot of people have had to go back to their banks and increase their lines of credit,” said Duane Kimball

Mannon, who returned to her home state of Nebraska and bought the ranch after a career in banking, believes the agricultural sector will make its views known in the midterms.

But like many people in the area, she prefers to avoid too much political argument.

That is not a problem for her friend and nearby rancher Jim Jenkins. A former independent Senate candidate, Jenkins is deeply proud of Nebraska agriculture and of his own ranch, which sits on land his family homesteaded more than 150 years ago.

Jenkins has been so angered by the policies he believes are hurting Nebraska’s agricultural industry that he wrote an opinion piece over the summer for an Omaha newspaper.

He has also felt the pressure personally, citing high diesel, fertiliser, lumber and steel costs — everything from barbed wire to fence posts.

That has been made worse by “uncertainty” about what comes next, he said, and what the next Trump announcement might mean for the industry.

“Those are the things that keep you up at night,” the 69-year-old told BBC News.

An outspoken Trump critic who did not vote for the president in any of his White House campaigns, Jenkins knows he is an outlier among his conservative neighbours. When Trump was first elected, Jenkins said he hoped he would prove “to be a practical business guy”.

Now, he said, “I think he’s been anything but practical”.

But for many Trump-supporting farmers and ranchers, the president’s decisions — even when they hurt them financially — still deserve the benefit of the doubt.

“We’ve all known this about Trump. He just kind of could be a little ‘shoot, fire, aim,’” Wolfinger said. “I wish you could, you know, put the gun back and holster it and then think about it.”

But, he said, “I think he’s, for the most part, trying to run this country in the right direction”.

Don Cantrell, whose grandfather began farming family land that now covers 12,000 acres, said he is still being hit by diesel costs and admits the president “does some stupid things” and “says some stupid things”.

But Cantrell believes Trump has been the “best president overall”.

“Let’s cut government waste,” he said. “There’s so much waste.”

Trump also holds positions on social issues — such as abortion and praising Christianity — that match the personal beliefs of many Nebraska voters.

“I think, in general, if you’re conservative in this country, you’re going to vote conservative,” Wolfinger said.

Don Batie, 67, agrees: “There’s a lot of other issues besides agriculture.”

Still, he said, the economic realities are difficult to ignore.

Batie retired from farming last year for a mix of personal and financial reasons. The corn and soybean farmer watched prices fall from $7 a bushel for corn in early 2022 to just $4.29 three years later.

But costs have not fallen, he said, with tariffs and inflation affecting his bottom line. As a result, he has had to give up his long-held dream of passing the 400-acre farm he owns to his daughter.

“It just wasn’t going to work now,” he said, sitting at the dining room table in the house where he grew up.

He only reached that conclusion within the past year after running the numbers.

“I knew things hadn’t been good,” he said. “But when I started working on the numbers… I was like, ‘This is going to be bad.’”

Batie voted for Trump in 2016 and again in the primary — but not in 2024, because he was disappointed with his policies. He said he had heard similar dissatisfaction across the state.

“They’re still strong Republicans,” he said of those people. “But they’re not a Trump supporter anymore.”

Across Nebraska, though, the industry keeps going.

On a rainy Thursday in Broken Bow, buyers wearing cowboy hats, plaid shirts and denim gathered for the regular indoor cattle auction.

Calves still have to be bought and sold, and ranch operations — many of them multi-generational — do not stop for politics.

Across the train tracks, past feed and hardware stores, Yvette Mannon summed up Nebraskans’ resilience and determination.

“People in agriculture are eternal optimists,” she said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t get in it.”