Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday unveiled a plan to help Michigan’s struggling small farms, making him the latest Democratic Senate hopeful to court farmers as rising costs weaken Republicans’ grip on rural America.
Farmers are under serious financial strain. Diesel prices, pushed up by the war in Iran, hit a record national average of about $6.52 a gallon last week, according to AAA. Fertilizer prices spiked this spring, just as farmers were buying for planting season, as the war bottlenecked the global supply. But even before the war, many farms were on precarious financial footing: Farm bankruptcies surged nearly 46% in 2025 according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, with the heaviest concentration of filings in the Midwest and South, including Georgia, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota.
With the midterms weeks away, Democrats in several Senate races see an opening in farm country, where their party has long struggled. Trump won 69% of rural voters in 2024, according to data from the Pew Research Center. But a recent KFF/Associated Press survey showed that 57% of rural voters — including 27% of rural Republicans — disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.
El-Sayed, who faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, rolled out the plan as part of a broader platform that also covers food and water safety. The campaign pieced it together with input from family farmers and members of the Michigan Farmers Union, a source familiar with the campaign told MS NOW, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
“Family farmers are feeling the pinch from Trump’s price hikes as much as anyone, and they are a key part of the coalition that will reject Mike Rogers and elect Abdul to the Senate this fall,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said in a statement.
Other Democratic Senate candidates, including Iowa’s Josh Turek, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan, have made similar appeals in recent months.
Ossoff, the only incumbent of the bunch, introduced the Farm Disaster Tax Cut Act in May, which would provide farmers with a tax cut after natural disasters or major revenue losses. It is one of a long list of agriculture bills stuck in the Senate, which is in its last week of session before the election.