Farmers Struggle to Keep Pace with Soaring Input Costs

For row crop farmers, managing costs and yield is crucial to maintaining profitability. They are price takers, meaning they have little influence over market prices for their goods. To stay afloat, farmers must balance meeting each crop's basic needs while finding ways to reduce or maintain costs. Advances in precision agriculture and new seed varieties have increased efficiency and yields, but these improvements come with associated costs.

Corn and soybean yields have seen significant increases of 32% and 45%, respectively, from 2010 to 2025, according to the USDA NASS 2026 data. However, cotton and rice yields have only increased by 18% and 8% over the same period. Meanwhile, input costs for these crops have skyrocketed: cotton costs have risen by 102%, rice costs by 93%, corn costs by 92%, and soybean costs by 90%.

To examine this trend further, Brian Mills of Southern Ag Today indexed prices and yields to 2010 and found that cost increases have outpaced yield gains for most crops. Cotton and rice costs have outpaced yield at a higher rate than what was seen in corn and soybeans for most of the time period between 2010 and 2025.