The Daily Dirt — Morning Edition
Farm bankruptcies hit a six-year high, California advances a PFAS pesticide ban, and USDA cuts $300M in young-farmer land-access grants. Here's the dirt.
- April 2026 saw 62 Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies — the highest single-month total since February 2020 and a 130% jump from April 2025 — as U.S. farm sector debt closes in on a projected record $624.7 billion this year, per Farm Policy News and USDA forecasts.
- California's AB 1603, which would ban 53 PFAS pesticides by 2035, cleared the state Assembly in May and is advancing in the Senate. EWG testing found PFAS fungicide fludioxonil in 90% of peach, plum, and nectarine samples and in 14% of all produce tested in 2026.
- USDA terminated $300 million in Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access contracts in March 2026, canceling 49 community-led programs in 40 states built to help young, tribal, and underserved farmers access land and capital — with at least one grantee suing over the cancellations, Civil Eats reported.
- Midwest bankruptcy spikes are sharpest: Iowa logged 18 Chapter 12 filings in 2025 (+220% from 2024), Missouri 16 (+167%), Wisconsin 16 (+700%), per Investigate Midwest. Ohio State Extension ag-law specialist Robert E. Moore says rising diesel and fertilizer costs have made 2026 'the breaking point' for crop farmers.
- The FTC's antitrust lawsuit against John Deere — alleging the company locks farmers out of their own equipment's diagnostic tools — survived a motion to dismiss and is advancing toward trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, per FTC case records. Deere separately settled a class-action right-to-repair suit for $99 million in April 2026.
- Energy companies are paying up to $200,000 per acre for rural agricultural land to site AI-driven data centers, according to AgWeb, with farm advisors urging landowners to consult attorneys before signing multi-decade lease agreements as electricity demand accelerates pressure on farmland conversion.
Good morning. The window from yesterday afternoon through now brought hard data and harder policy — here’s what moved.
The headline number is 62. That’s how many family farm operators filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy in April 2026 — the highest single-month total in more than six years, per Farm Policy News. It’s 130% above April 2025 and 82% above March of this year. Arkansas, Missouri, and California are leading the country in filings so far in 2026. The Midwest is getting hit hardest: Iowa filings jumped 220% in 2025, Wisconsin 700%. USDA’s own projections put total farm sector debt at a record $624.7 billion by year’s end, with interest expenses hitting $33 billion — another record. Investigate Midwest clocked 2025 annual filings at 315, up 46% from 2024. The cushion that held through the federal support years is gone.
On the contamination beat: California’s AB 1603 would ban all 53 PFAS pesticides currently approved in the state, with a 2035 deadline for most and a tighter 2030 deadline for the 23 already banned in the EU. EWG testing found the PFAS fungicide fludioxonil in 90% of stone fruit samples this year. The bill cleared the Assembly in May and is now in the Senate. If it passes, the national market follows — growers who sell into California can’t run two separate chemical programs.
Young farmers took another hit in March when USDA terminated $300 million in ILCMA contracts — 49 programs in 40 states that were actively helping beginning, tribal, and underserved farmers get land under their feet. National Young Farmers Coalition called the move a gut punch to the next generation of growers. At least one grantee, Agroecology Commons, is part of a lawsuit arguing USDA lacked authority to cancel binding congressional agreements.
On the equipment front: the FTC’s antitrust case against John Deere survived a motion to dismiss and is moving toward trial. The company separately settled the class-action right-to-repair suit for $99 million in April, but the FTC’s case — which alleges Deere illegally funnels all diagnostic repair work to its own dealer network — remains alive and in federal court.
What to watch: The California PFAS bill heads to Senate committee hearings this summer. Chapter 12 data for May and June will be the next read on whether the April spike was a single-month anomaly or the start of a new staircase up. And federal courts have one more month before summer recess to move the ILCMA contract lawsuits into discovery.
Stay on the land. — Save US Farms Desk