Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware farmers have been strapped over the past year by the uncertainty of international tariffs, rising fertilizer and machinery costs and low sales prices for their crops. Local farmers say the continued delay in Congressional approval of new federal farm subsidies has made the situation more challenging, as the future of crop insurance and other support programs remains unclear.
Delaware farmers are eager for a clearer understanding of the future of federal agricultural subsidies, but partisan gridlock in Congress has further complicated a path forward.
Negotiations over the federal farm bill, legislation typically passed by Congress every five years that sets agricultural and food assistance policies for the country, have stalled — in large part due to disagreements among lawmakers about the future of food assistance programs included in the proposal.
But while federal lawmakers are stuck in a stalemate, farmers in Delaware face a growing financial and environmental uncertainty. They are stretched thin by rising costs of fertilizer and machinery, which have been exacerbated by the war in Iran, and dropping prices of corn and soybeans.
At the same time, some Delaware producers say their reliance on the farm bill at all is a symptom of fundamental problems with the American agriculture industry. They argue farmers should not be in financial situations where they need government crop insurance or price subsidy programs to stay afloat.
“I don’t want the government’s help,” Dover-area grain farmer Paul Cartanza said. “I want to be able to sell my product and make money without having interference from the government.”
The last comprehensive five-year U.S. farm bill was passed in 2018, and was due for renewal in 2023.
Due to disagreements over nutrition programs in the bill, however, Congress has not yet advanced a complete farm bill since, forcing the government to pass temporary funding extensions to the 2018 legislation.
The House of Representatives passed an updated farm bill in April, but it has since been held up in the Senate Agriculture Committee because of disagreements over Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) — otherwise known as the food stamp program — expected to go into effect in 2027.
While the majority of dollars in the farm bill actually go to food assistance programs like SNAP, the legislation also has a substantial impact on farmers’ access to crop insurance subsidies, price stabilization measures and conservation programs.
Delaware farmers have varying opinions on specific provisions within the bill, but they agree that getting a comprehensive bill passed this year should be a top priority, so the federal government’s support for farmers becomes more predictable.
“Basically, it’s hard to play a game that you don’t know the rules to yet,” said John Clendaniel, a farming outreach program director at Delaware State University.
Crop insurance a particular concern
Roughly $150 billion in a typical farm bill is spent on crop insurance programs, which subsidize the amount of money farms must pay for coverage against severe weather events or price drops.
A handful of local farmers told Spotlight Delaware the crop insurance program is the part of the omnibus legislation that has the most tangible impact on their day-to-day operations.
Cartanza, the Dover-area farmer, said he uses the crop insurance subsidy to make the “gamble” a bit less stressful each year about how much his crops will yield.
Jim Minner, a Felton-area farmer and the president of the Kent County Farm Bureau, said he, too, utilizes the federally subsidized insurance so as not to lose his operation in a challenging financial year.
While the 2018 farm bill subsidized about 60% of farmers’ costs under the federal crop insurance program, the specifics of future subsidies are less clear without a renewal of the farm bill.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress in July 2025 included additional crop insurance subsidies, which alleviated some of the near-term uncertainty created by temporary extensions to the 2018 farm bill, said Nate Bruce, a University of Delaware agricultural researcher.
Delaware farmers said they would like to see a similar crop insurance program in the updated farm bill, with some adjustments to better suit the smaller size of Delaware farms.
Ray Ellis, who operates a 700-acre grain farm in the Millsboro area, said the program itself can be a risk because the payments are made based on weather at the county level. But there can be a wide variance in how different farmers within one county – or even different crops on one farmer’s land – fare.
The system makes more sense in the Midwest, where many farms are larger, and might stretch across a sizable portion of the often smaller counties. But on smaller Delaware farms, especially across the large geographic footprint of Kent and Sussex counties, the weather experience can vary dramatically.
For example, Cartanza said his farm in Dover fared relatively well this year, while Dave Marvel, a Harrington-area farmer, and Minner said they experienced substantially less rain further south in Kent County.
The weather patterns also tend to be more volatile in Delaware because of the state’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, Bruce said.
Marvel said farmers in Delaware must work to keep the state’s federal delegation attuned to the needs of the mid-Atlantic when they are working on the farm bill because the legislation tends to be “heavily influenced from the South and the Midwest.”
Additional fruit, fuel considerations
While it is relatively certain that a crop insurance program will be included in the farm bill, local growers said, more controversial provisions on fruit and vegetable production along with a now-dead-in-the-water proposal relating to corn fuel production are also top of mind for some Delaware farmers.
A proposed segment of the new farm bill would provide expanded funding for research and crop insurance for fruit and vegetable farmers. Local farmers argue this would help encourage the state’s horticulture industry.
Marvel, the Harrington-area farmer, grows both grain and watermelons.
He said the watermelon side of his operation more commonly gets wiped out by disease or weather issues, and crop insurance for fruits and vegetables can be too expensive to buy, making the business risky.
Marvel said more support for domestic fruit and vegetable production would be a win-win situation. More produce might also be available for purchase in the United States, potentially addressing some of the food insecurity debates surrounding the farm bill.
“Realistically, the farm bill impacts every American citizen in one way, shape or form,” Marvel said. “They just don’t realize it.”
Clendaniel, the DSU researcher, said he works with many farmers who are just starting out through the university’s farm incubator program. These growers often face financial barriers to getting off the ground, which could be solved, in part, by increased support for horticulture programs, he explained.
Along with fruit and vegetable subsidies, a number of local farmers expressed their support for the hotly debated E15 proposal, which would have allowed year-round sales of E15, a blend of gasoline and ethanol, for car fuel.
It is unlikely the measure will be included in the final farm bill, as it was not a part of the House version passed in April.
However, some local producers said they believe the expansion of E15 sales would have been a viable solution to the country’s problem of corn overproduction, as it would have increased demand for corn, thereby raising the price of the crop.
“There was a lot of back and forth about E15 ethanol all year, and that would be huge,” Bruce said. “It would definitely help out corn producers in Delaware.”
Other members of the agriculture industry are skeptical, though, that an E15 sale expansion would be a viable permanent solution.
Looking ahead
Uncertainty remains for Delaware farmers as senators continue to hash out the largely partisan disagreement over whether the updated farm bill will include a delay in the implementation of the Trump administration’s SNAP benefit cuts.
Many Delaware farmers echoed a sentiment of frustration that the gridlock and prevailing discussion about the farm bill revolves around nutrition programs rather than actual assistance to farmers.
Some growers said they would like to see the two decoupled into a separate “food bill” and “farm bill,” which might allow the farm bill to pass more swiftly. Others said the two topics are too closely connected to be separated.
“I think both sides agree that if we don’t have agriculture, the country’s pretty much done,” said Minner, the Felton-area farmer. “Agriculture keeps this country alive.”
But as senators are set to continue to hash out their largely partisan disagreement over food assistance programs when they return from their summer recess in mid-September, uncertainty remains for Delaware farmers.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
