Two weeks before the 2026 midterm election, the Trump administration revealed a plan to provide $8 billion in one-time payments to farmers impacted by rising fuel and input prices through the Harvest Fuel Relief (HFR) program.
The HFR program will be funded by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Charter Act and administered by the Farm Service Agency, the USDA shared in a press release. The CCC is a government-owned corporation within the Department of Agriculture that supports domestic farm incomes without the need to pass congressional appropriations.
Payment rates for Title I commodities will be released next month, while specialty crop growers and other non-Title 1 producers are encouraged to share data related to fuel costs with the USDA to determine payment rates.
Donald Trump announced the plan during a Kansas campaign event on Oct. 19, where he teed up additional farmer relief if the Republicans win the midterms. Previously, Trump signed executive order 14435 to defer specific diesel fuel tax obligations to help truckers and farmers with rising fuel prices.
The HFR follows a string of payments to farmers during the second Trump administration. Earlier this year, the Trump administration provided $12 billion in one-time FBA payments to offset trade volatility and $14 billion in gross payments from the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs.
Farm groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation were quick to praise the administration for the assistance, while advocating for passage of the farm bill and other industry prioritizes like year-round blending of ethanol at 15% (i.e., E15).
“Farmers and ranchers welcome the administration’s announcement of $8 billion in relief through the Harvest Fuel Relief program to help farmers struggling with high diesel prices. We appreciate President Trump and Secretary Rollins recognizing that higher diesel prices have squeezed farmers’ bottom lines. By building on the Farmer Bridge Assistance program, USDA will be able to quickly deliver this relief to farm country,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall in a press release.
Is Trump helping farmers, his party’s midterm chances, or both?
The announcement of the $8 billion in assistance comes two weeks from the 2026 midterm election. Harvard University’s ElectIt forecasting model predicts that Democrats have a 72% chance of taking control over the House of Representatives and the Senate, which mark a shift in ag policy.
Increasingly, farmers are saying that the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction. More than half (52%) of farmers surveyed in the September 2026 Ag Economy Barometer report said the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction, the first time that a majority of growers agreed with that statement.
In the 2024 presidential election, farming-dependent counties largely voted for Trump, with an average of 77.7%, according to non-profit and non-partisan news site Investigate Midwest.
In Iowa — where a quarter of the population is employed in agriculture — the pain of rising fuel and input prices is acute. Both gubernatorial candidates are running on a platform to lower input prices for farmers and address the state’s growing problem of nitrates in the waterways, as AgNavigator reported previously.
