By Jarrett Renshaw and Karl Plume
Jan 27 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will travel to Iowa on Tuesday, seeking to shore up political support in a state critical to his rural coalition, as mounting stress in the farm economy and delays on biofuel policy test the patience of farmers and renewable-fuel producers.
The visit to the nation’s largest producer of corn, hogs and ethanol comes as growing anxiety over weak crop prices, high input costs and policy uncertainty threatens to erode Trump’s popularity across the U.S. farm belt.
Lance Lillibridge, a 56-year-old corn and cattle farmer, said he plans to make the two-hour drive from his farm in Vinton to the Des Moines area to see Trump. Like many farmers, he said he has been hit hard by the trade war with China and rising costs of seeds and fertilizer, and he hopes the administration will pursue another multibillion-dollar farm bailout.
“There’s going to have to be something because right now everything’s just terrible. I’ve never been so cash poor in my entire life,” Lillibridge said, describing himself as a Trump supporter “for the most part.”
The Iowa stop comes as the White House manages a crisis in neighboring Minnesota after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti during a protest in Minneapolis, sparking widespread demonstrations and calls for independent investigations.
Trump is expected to emphasize his administration’s support for agriculture and renewable fuels, while casting his broader economic agenda as a push to make food, fuel and household goods more affordable, according to administration officials.
Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, said while Trump’s trade policies have hurt crop farmers, the administration has eased regulations and kept fuel prices lower to maintain support.
“I think as long as Trump and a Republican Congress are willing to backfill a significant amount of crop losses with special programs, his support will remain solid,” Irwin said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday showed that 30% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the rising cost of living, while 59% disapproved, including nine in 10 Democrats and one in five Republicans.
Strain in the U.S. farm economy has been mushrooming, from unsold tractors to agribusiness companies reporting shrinking earnings. Abundant grain supplies have weighed on markets, while production costs remain high, leaving crop prices weak for a third straight year.
Delays in biofuel policy have compounded the pressure. The administration has delayed final biofuel-blending quotas for 2026. The quotas are known as renewable volume obligations, or RVOs.
It has also not finalized tax guidance for renewable-fuel credits known as 45Z, and efforts have stalled on a long-standing priority for corn growers: securing congressional approval for year-round sales of gasoline blended with 15% ethanol.
“Without nationwide, year-round E15, many of us are now going to continue relying on government payments to stay afloat,” Mark Mueller, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, said in a statement.
Those delays have hit Iowa’s biodiesel industry particularly hard. Iowa’s biodiesel plants produced 244 million gallons in 2025, down 31% from 2024, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association said. At full capacity, the state’s plants can produce more than 400 million gallons a year.
“2025 was a real gut punch for biodiesel everywhere, and Iowa was no exception,” said Monte Shaw, executive director of the association. “Lack of tax policy coupled with low biofuel quotas sent producers into a tailspin. We have plants trying to hang on by their fingertips waiting for clarity from Washington.”
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia and Karl Plum in Chicago; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Ethan Smith)
