Farmers and ranchers are remarkable people.
Collectively, farms in the United States earned $159 billion in take-home pay in 2025. That earned income seems astronomical until the gross income is considered – $624 billion in 2025, meaning about $465 billion was spent on overall operating costs. It is not easy to be a farmer or rancher.
If you’ve ever seen A Charlie Brown Christmas, you know the call for a “great big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree.” And, from afar, that is what our proud agricultural community brings to the proverbial table.
Yet, when we look closer, perhaps the tree isn’t so shiny as it seems.
According to most recent data, 361 farms across the U.S. filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy proceedings thus far in 2025. Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings are specific to agriculture and fishing, allowing operators to restructure debt while continuing to operate. However, the number of filings this year is a 13 percent increase over 2024.
In A Charlie Brown Christmas Linus goes on to say, “It’s not bad at all really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
Maybe the agricultural community just needs a little policy love.
America’s farms and ranches are often forgotten in policy discussions despite their primary function – feeding people from all walks of life – largely because they are not widely represented legislatively. A 2024 study noted just 36 members of Congress had direct experience in agriculture. When agriculture is under-represented in policy discussions, it shows in the result for not just farmers and ranchers but for all the other people who rely on them: farmworkers, truckers, grocers, packers, and, effectively, everyone who eats.
At the conclusion of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Linus wraps his beloved blue blanket around the base of the bedraggled tree chosen by his friend and the rest of the Peanuts gang festoons it with garland and decorations from Snoopy’s prize-winning doghouse décor. The tree Lucy deems as “poor” from the start needs a “little bit of love” to become a showstopper worthy of being a Christmas carol centerpiece at the end.
While our agricultural community is no “poor tree” now, it is certainly bedraggled after years of weathering various economic and regulatory burdens. But, with “a little bit of love,” our farmers and ranchers can wrap up in a proverbial blue blanket this holiday season and be transformed into a “great big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree” (or a lovely evergreen from any one of the numerous farms scattered around the United States).
From my farm to your family, I wish you the very best this holiday season has to offer. I hope your home is filled with joy and your heart full of happy anticipation for a brighter year to come. – Pam Lewison
