COMO, Miss. — On a bright, dry Friday in Panola County, 73-year-old Sledge Taylor did what he’s done every morning for 53 years: he walked his fields. The little green corn stalks on about 4,000 acres are between vegetative stages V3 and V5, a critical time when roots deepen and farmers typically side-dress with nitrogen fertilizer to protect yields.
Normally Taylor would slice the soil and apply nitrogen with a 20-inch steel disk. “But I may not do it this year,” he said. “Because of the price of nitrogen and the low price of corn.”
Nitrogen is essential for corn. Roughly one-third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer moves through the Strait of Hormuz — which is closed amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran — and about 20% of global fuel also transits the waterway. The closure has driven fertilizer and diesel prices sharply higher.
Taylor has been buying diesel “hand to mouth.” Although he has capacity for more than 20,000 gallons on the farm, he’s sitting on about 1,000. “Sometimes we know that we’ve only got two weeks of fuel,” he said. The war has arrived in spring, the busiest season for planting, fuel use and fertilizer application, compounding financial strain.
Delta farmers were already struggling. Retaliatory tariffs and trade disruptions following the Trump administration’s tariffs gutted export markets the region relies on: China largely stopped buying U.S. soybeans, rice exports to Latin America plummeted, corn and cotton prices fell. Taylor called the loss of export customers permanent for some crops and said the relief payment he received through the administration’s $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program covered only about 20% of last year’s losses. His patience with the administration is “wearing thin.”
A USDA spokesperson noted the administration has provided over $30 billion in ad hoc assistance to farmers since January 2025, but the agency did not answer whether additional payments are being considered specifically to offset rising fertilizer and fuel costs.
A few miles away near the town of Sledge, 58-year-old Anthony Bland is running the numbers and seeing the same grim picture. Bland farms about 2,000 acres of rice and soybeans and, like many Delta producers, traces his work through generations: “From the cotton fields to what we’re doing now,” he said. The region’s history — the legacy of plantations, slavery and Jim Crow — still shapes local agriculture.
Delta farmers depend on diesel-powered pumps for irrigation in ways many Midwest farmers do not. A record-breaking drought this spring has made those pumps run longer and burn more fuel. “Right now I’m paying 60% more for diesel fuel than I would have been paying 45 days ago,” Bland said.
Fertilizer costs have jumped, too. Bland said the 35 tons of fertilizer he used to buy for his rice and corn cost roughly $16,000 last year; he’s penciled in about $26,000 for the same amount this year. That increase is before accounting for rising parts, equipment, insurance and other inputs — even as commodity prices remain flat or fall.
Like Taylor, Bland received money from the Farmer Bridge Assistance program and estimated it covered about a quarter of his tariff losses. But he is also navigating changes to long-standing USDA programs that once aided Black farmers. Those programs existed because Black farmers historically faced discrimination from lenders and agencies and often operate at smaller scales with less financial cushion. Bland said he did not vote for Trump in 2024 and objects to how the administration has treated people who “don’t look like him.”
Both men said they oppose the war with Iran and are unsure if they can keep farming. Bland called this a “make or break” year: he may stop planting family fields, lease land out, or leave farming altogether. Taylor, recalling the farm crisis of the 1980s, said he’s never seen prices swing this wildly and fears this could be “the nail in the coffin for a number of farmers.”
“There’s an old African proverb,” Taylor said, looking across rows of green corn: “When elephants fight, it’s the ants that get crushed.” The ants, he said, are being crushed now.