In a poignant segment aired recently on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker delved into the heart-wrenching struggles of America’s family farms. Titled “The Family Farm,” the report paints a stark picture of an industry on the brink. Generations-old operations are buckling under crushing economic pressures, with low commodity prices, soaring input costs, and trade disruptions pushing countless farms toward extinction. What emerges is not just a financial tale of woe, but a human one: farmers staring down the barrel of despair, where the suicide rate is three times higher than in the general workforce.
A Perfect Storm of Financial Devastation
The numbers tell a grim story. According to United States Department of Agriculture data, major row crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat have not turned a profit since at least 2022. Input costs, from seeds and fertilizer to equipment parts, have surged more than 30 percent over the past five years alone, fueled by inflation and climbing interest rates. The fallout? In the first half of 2025, farm bankruptcies spiked 57 percent compared to the same period last year, per United States Courts records.
At the epicenter of this storm are families like those of Franklin Carmack and Jeffrey Daniels in Tennessee. Fifth-generation farmers, they cultivate cotton, soybeans, and corn on land tilled by their ancestors since the late 1800s. This year, they project a combined loss of nearly $800,000. Desperate measures define their days: instead of celebrating their harvest at the West Tennessee State Fair, they hawked 250 T-shirts, sewn from their own cotton, for $35 apiece. The proceeds barely dented the red ink.
Carmack, who juggles farming with side gigs like truck driving and boat repair, feels the toll acutely. “I take four blood pressure pills a day now,” he shared with Whitaker. Tariffs exacerbate the pain, jacking up prices on imported components for sprayers and other machinery. Daniels laid it bare: “Anything that comes from China that’s on that sprayer, there’s a tariff and they’re just going to pass it directly to us.”The mood across rural America is one of frayed nerves and fading hope. “The morale in the farming industry, not just farmers, is the lowest I’ve ever seen,” Carmack said. “Everybody’s on edge.” Daniels echoed the uncertainty: “Do you just keep going, rolling the dice, hoping things will turn? I mean, it’s not looking good.” For Carmack, the fear runs deeper: “What’s gonna be left in a year, two years? Am I the one that broke what started in the late 1800s?”
Cotton growers face unique headwinds too. Global demand has withered as clothing makers pivot to synthetic alternatives, leaving prices in freefall. Soybean exports, America’s largest at nearly $25 billion last year, ground to a halt in May when China retaliated against tariffs by ceasing purchases. The ripple effects? Farms shuttering, communities hollowing out, and a way of life teetering on oblivion.
A Suicide Rate Three Times the National Average
Behind the balance sheets lies a darker crisis: mental health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest 2021 data reveals that suicide rates among agricultural workers are triple those of the broader workforce. As crop revenues plummet, calls to rural mental health hotlines have surged, a barometer of desperation in the heartland.
In Missouri’s Shelby County, which boasts the state’s highest per capita suicide rate, nonprofit leader Jolie Foreman runs Shelby County Cares, a lifeline dedicated to preventing farmer suicides. With just one therapist for every 6,000 residents, resources are threadbare. Foreman connects stoic farmers to counseling, often through proxies like their spouses or simple acts of sharing meals. “We cannot really determine our success,” she told 60 Minutes. “We only can calculate the losses.”The losses are personal and profound. Foreman has lost family members and neighbors to suicide, tragedies that echo across generations. Her father-in-law, Brent Foreman, who farms over 1,000 acres of soybeans, 650 acres of corn, and more than 200 head of cattle alongside his son Jarrell, has buried three relatives, all farmers, since the 1970s. Two more neighbors fell this year. “I’ve always had a fear for my kids and now my grandkids that we sure don’t want history to repeat itself,” Brent said. “No matter how bad things get, things always have a way of working out. They’ll always get better.”
In neighboring Macon County, two farm suicides were confirmed this year alone, with Foreman bracing for more as finances sour. The segment underscores how isolation, stigma, and relentless pressure compound the risks, turning fields of promise into landscapes of quiet peril.
Commodity Prices Frozen in Time
Perhaps the most infuriating piece of data is that farmers today pocket the same prices for their commodities as their grandparents did half a century ago. Adjusted for inflation or not, the stagnation is criminal when juxtaposed against exploding costs. That 30 percent-plus hike in inputs over five years is just the tip; equipment, fuel, and labor have ballooned, eroding margins to dust.
Tennessee’s Daniels and Carmack embody this temporal trap. Their soybeans and cotton fetch rates unchanged since the Nixon era, yet every dollar spent on production buys less than ever. “I’d show him [President Trump] the daily life that I do from cleaning equipment, running equipment, dispatching trucks,” Carmack mused, imagining a farm tour for the commander-in-chief. “And then I’d hand him a stack of bills. And then I would show him the receipts, what I’m getting from my crop. He’s a smart man. I’m not going to take that away from him. And it won’t take him the five minutes to say, ‘This isn’t going to work.'”
Moving Beyond Band-Aids
The 60 Minutes report arrives amid glimmers of policy flux. A recent Trump-Xi trade pact delays 100 percent tariffs on select Chinese goods, and a promised $13 billion farmer bailout looms, funded by tariff revenues. Yet farmers like Carmack dismiss it as superficial: “It will help pay some bills, but that’s not fixing the problem. It’s a Band-Aid when we need stitches.”
Optimism flickers in places, like the Foreman family’s steadfast faith in long-term deals. Nearly 80 percent of voters in farm-heavy counties backed Trump last election, per Investigate Midwest data. Still, frustration simmers. At town halls, growers confront lawmakers, demanding structural reform over stopgaps. Daniels captured the ambivalence: “I feel like a lot of American farmers, cattle people, it’s a lot, a lot of people probably feel let down. Maybe there’s a method to the madness, you know, that’s still to be seen.”
For people like us, this segment is a gut punch. The family farm is not merely an economic engine; it is the backbone of our food security and cultural heritage. As farmers like Carmack fight to preserve their legacies, we must amplify these voices. Demand fair prices that reflect true costs. Advocate for mental health parity in rural America. And remember: every meal on our tables traces back to hands weathered by more than weather alone. The fight for family farms is all of ours.
