Ask why the cheese is free

Written for the High Plains Journal

I suppose it is not the first time that soybeans have been piled on the ground but on Saturday Oct 4, 2025, I saw the largest outdoor pile of soybeans I have ever witnessed anywhere right here in Nebraska. Piling corn is a thing every year, but this soybean pile really got my attention. Is it because of the predicted huge corn/soybean yield this year or is it because we have not pursued marketing our crop overseas in lieu of playing tariff games? I contend that it is likely all of those and more.

For the past 30 days, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins of the USDA has been spouting off about how bad the farm economy is. While that is the most truthful statement she has ever made, maybe she should go on to discuss how the USDA is one of leading causes of the farm disaster that is upon us.

I have written before about how we have a USDA that has created incentives for farm products used as fuel instead of food. That blame can’t be fairly assessed to this administration, but the current USDA has done nothing about the problem except provide lip service. And they are about to write big checks to farmers to assist with the tough times. Show me one legitimate economist who says the path to profitability is through farm payments.

My real problem with Brooke Rollins is that the rhetoric she sends from DC doesn’t match what is happening on the ground. When this Trump team came into office, it was projected that the US agricultural trade deficit for 2025 would be at $52 billion. How in the world can the United States import $1 more in ag products than we export, let alone $52 billion. Despite what we were hoping, Trump has only made it worse.

In Feb. 2025, Rollins announced the import of millions of eggs from Turkey and South Korea to offset the stupid flock-destroying policy that Trump continues today for poultry that may have seen H5N1 fly overhead. In the past 60 days, the USDA has killed 435,000 turkeys in South Dakota and Minnesota. I have news for you all: migratory birds are not responsible for these outbreaks, yet USDA is sticking to this narrative.

In April 2025, Rollins announced a Lawfare Portal that any farmer can use for assistance if they are being harassed by a government agency. If you let them know, they will fix it. As of Oct. 2025, I have not had one farmer or rancher that has submitted a complaint into the portal tell me they have even gotten a response much less resolution. Hank Vogler, my friend in Nevada, currently has FIVE government agencies trying to shut down his sheep operation and it has been crickets from the Rollins team.

On Aug. 19 of this year, Rollins hosted a special press conference in Tennessee for this press announcement:

Yesterday U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins alongside Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Senator Bill Hagerty, Representative John Rose, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden, announced USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects. Subsidized solar farms have made it more difficult for farmers to access farmland by making it more expensive and less available.

“We are no longer allowing businesses to use your taxpayer dollars to fund solar projects on prime American farmland, and we will no longer allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in our USDA-funded projects.”

Since that announcement, I have had no less than five phone calls a week about NEW proposed solar or wind developments that will consume farmland including one in Perkins County, NE where I plan to attend the meeting of the County Commission this evening.

Let’s not forget that the 2025 USDA Scientific Dietary Committee (that was not assembled under Trump) has as an advisory member in Dr. Chris Gardner from Stanford University who is taking money from the fake protein crowd and is a vegan activist. In Sept. 2025, Rollins announced the addition of Dr. Ben Carson to the team. While I happen to think he is good guy, his religious dietary choices do not reflect those of us in rural America. He recently indicated that he is back to eating a small amount of meat, but his wife continues to be a strict vegetarian.

I don’t even have enough column inches to discuss the yo-yo decisions made by USDA surrounding the New World Screw Worm and the $750 million sterile fly facility taxpayers are funding in Texas, when a simple ivermectin strategy would solve the problem.

USDA and the Trump administration have a problem and it is that their rhetoric doesn’t match their action. At some point, more people are going to realize we are being led to slaughter ourselves. Just like Hank Vogler points out regularly, “The mouse doesn’t ask why the cheese is free until it is too late.” What government cheese are you enjoying now and what do you think that trap will look like?