On August 24, 2026, Arkansas Breaking News reported the results of a new tracking project out of the University of Arkansas. Between January 2021 and June 2026, Arkansas farms filed for bankruptcy 83 times. Only California filed more.
And 80 of those 83 Arkansas cases were filed under Chapter 12 — the chapter of the bankruptcy code written specifically for family farmers. That is the highest family-farm bankruptcy count of any state in the country.
Arkansas is the number one rice-producing state in America. Farming is its largest industry. And it is now the place where family farms file for bankruptcy more often than anywhere else in the United States.
Rick Crawford has represented Arkansas's 1st District — the Delta, the rice and soybean country — since 2011. His own biography calls him "a senior member on the House Agriculture Committee, having played a critical role in passing two Farm Bills, having served on the Conference Committees in 2014 and 2018." He has a degree in agriculture business and economics and built a career in farm-news broadcasting before Congress. If any member of Congress owns this file, it is him.
Here is what he has been saying while it happened.
2018: "I don't think it's going to be a problem"
In March 2018, when Trump first announced steel and aluminum tariffs, Arkansas agriculture officials went to the press worried. Crawford went the other way.
"I don't think it's going to be a problem," he told Talk Business & Politics of the tariff threat. "China is creating economic strife. … It's time to play hardball with China."
In the same article, the president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau said the opposite. Randy Veach warned that if the United States put tariffs on steel and aluminum, China, Canada and Mexico might retaliate against soybeans and rice. "It has the potential to hurt our farmers and ranchers," he said.
The president of the American Soybean Association, quoted in the same story, put it this way: "Our competitors in Brazil and Argentina are all too happy to pick up supplying the Chinese market."
Remember that sentence. It was published in March 2018.
A month later, Crawford was still not worried. "I think right now it's just rhetoric. … Ultimately our soybeans will find their way to China," he said. Soybean-producing countries such as Argentina, he added, wouldn't be able to match American farmers on quality or volume.
2025: "yielding some pretty positive results"
Seven years later, he had not changed his mind.
On August 3, 2025, Crawford told Talk Business & Politics: "I actually commend the president for taking the action that he's taken, and I see this as a powerful move to help support American ag producers, American workers, American industry, and American consumers." He added: "I think it's yielding some pretty positive results."
Here is what 2025 actually looked like for the farmers he represents.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau says the state's soybean, rice, corn and cotton growers lost an average of $243 per acre that year. Every major Arkansas row crop saw prices fall.
Nationally, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose 46% in 2025 to 315 filings, the second straight annual increase. And the American Farm Bureau Federation named the state at the top of the list: "Arkansas, leads the U.S. in Chapter 12 filings in 2025 with 33 filings, more than double 2024 and the most in the state in the 21st century."
Thirty-three filings out of 315 nationwide. As KATV put it, that is roughly ten percent of the country's farm bankruptcies for 2025.
Kenneth Graves, chairman of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association, told the station what that feels like from inside it. "If things don't turn around, probably this year, if not the next year, the door won't be big enough for everybody to get out at the same time."
The Argentina part
In the fall of 2025 — weeks after Crawford called the tariffs a powerful move to support American ag producers — the U.S. Treasury signed a $20 billion currency lifeline for Argentina, and the Treasury Secretary said he was looking for ways to add another $20 billion on top. Around the same stretch, Argentina's government temporarily removed its export taxes on farm goods, and China bought roughly 7 million metric tons of Argentine soybeans almost immediately.
American taxpayers helped prop up the currency of the country that took the sale.
That is the scenario the American Soybean Association's president had described in March 2018 — in the very article where Crawford said tariffs wouldn't be a problem. Crawford was in Congress for all of it, on the Agriculture Committee for all of it. Arkansas farmers are still waiting to hear what he did to stop it.
The help that arrives too late
To his credit, Crawford now says the aid is not enough — and he is right.
A $12 billion farmer relief package cleared Congress in late December 2025, and the USDA promised the money would be distributed no later than February 28, 2026. Talk Business & Politics reported that many experts figured the $12 billion might offset as much as 25% of farm losses.
"It was an inadequate number by itself, which is why we're working aggressively to provide some legislative solutions," Crawford said in that February 2026 interview. "If the damage is done in 2025, you can't wait till 2026 to get help."
That is a good sentence. So look at what happened to the solution.
Crawford's answer was the Bridge the Gap for Rural Communities Act, H.R. 5710, which would let farmers take a 50% advance on their safety-net payments for the 2025 crop year instead of waiting until October 2026, and would lift the caps on those payments. He introduced it on October 8, 2025. It picked up 31 cosponsors.
On December 2, 2025, it was referred to the Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities, Risk Management, and Credit — a subcommittee Crawford himself sits on.
It has not moved since. That is nearly nine months of nothing, in a subcommittee he serves on, in a committee run by his own party, in a House run by his own party, for the state with the most family-farm bankruptcies in the country.
The reason the "gap" exists at all is worth saying out loud. The improved farm safety-net payments Crawford wants to advance were written into Trump's budget bill — the same bill Crawford voted for on July 3, 2025, and the same bill that cut $187 billion from food assistance. Those farm payments don't start flowing until after October 1, 2026. By his own account, the damage was done in 2025.
Meanwhile the farm bill itself — the actual law that sets the safety net — has been extended on a temporary basis yet again, now running through September 30, roughly three years behind schedule. Republicans have held the House majority for that entire stretch.
This is a pattern in Arkansas
Crawford is not the only one. Steve Womack put a provision in a spending bill that stopped the USDA from enforcing protections for chicken farmers against the meat companies that buy their birds. When we went through what Arkansas's whole congressional delegation is costing the state, farm policy was one of the clearest examples: six Republicans, one of the most agricultural states in the country, and a record of votes that keeps landing on the wrong side of the people who grow things.
Crawford's version has one extra feature. He was warned in print, in an Arkansas business paper, by the president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, before any of it happened. He said it wouldn't be a problem.
What the record shows
Arkansas has recorded 83 farm bankruptcies since 2021 — second in the nation, and first in the country for Chapter 12 family-farm filings, with 80. Its soybean, rice, corn and cotton growers lost an average of $243 an acre in 2025, the year Rick Crawford called Trump's tariffs "a powerful move to help support American ag producers" that were "yielding some pretty positive results." Crawford has been in Congress since 2011 and calls himself a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee. His own relief bill for those farmers has sat in a subcommittee he serves on since December 2, 2025, and the farm bill is roughly three years behind schedule.
Source
Arkansas ranks second in nation for farm bankruptcies, new tracking project shows — Field Walsh, Arkansas Breaking News, August 24, 2026. Photo courtesy of Arkansas Breaking News.
