Faribault Daily News

By Chloe Kucera

The dense fog of the morning began to lift and the sun peeked through as U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrived Wednesday at the Purfeerst Farm.

The Faribault farm was one of the stops on her Minnesota rural county tour to hear the concerns of her constituents who are being impacted by current economic issues.

As the ranking member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, she wanted to hear from the Purfeersts about any financial difficulties they might be facing and how tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration have affected them. She also wanted to let them know what is going on in the U.S Senate and how she is working to help farmers.

Matt Purfeerst, a sixth-generation farmer, told Klobuchar that the yield for this year’s corn and soybeans is expected to be high.

“We’re going to harvest in a week or two,” he said. “We’re actually looking much more optimistic than last year. This growing season has been phenomenal.”

Jim Purfeerst, owner of Purfeerst Farm and Rice County Commissioner, said in his 62 years of experience, this year is looking like the most uniform crop he has ever seen.

Purfeest said that, as farmers, they are lucky because there are two ethanol plants and four Jenny-O turkey plants nearby that they can sell to, keeping their product local.

“Anything you can do to increase domestic use is the biggest benefit we can see,” Matt Purfeerst said. “Less exporting and more internal use.”

Klobuchar said at another farm she visited, they were pointing out how anything that increases demand for their product would be helpful. Some congressional members are currently looking to help do this with a provision to have E15 — a fuel blend of 85% gasoline and 15% ethanol — be available for purchase year-round. Currently, it is not for sale during the summer due to EPA requirements. Change would create a higher demand for corn.

South Central College Farm Business Management Instructor Mark Wehe compiled information about Rice County Agricultural economic statistics for 2025 to present to Klobuchar.

She was appreciative of seeing specific data broken down and presented to her, similar to what she had seen at a previous farm during her tour.

“At the last farm we went to in Tyler, I saw the economics on corn and soybeans,” she said. “It was so good to see. They showed how much revenue, how much the inputs are, and where that leaves him right now. I thought that was really helpful.”

Wehe showed her the current crop prices, gross revenue per acre, overhead expenses, net return, and net return after government program payments with different crop rotation models.

The net return of the crops before government assistance is in the negative range per acre, between -102 and -164.

Wehe said that between 2023 and 2025, farmers are experiencing “one of the largest net income drops in history.” This is due to the lower price of corn and the increasing cost of production inputs.

Matt Purfeerst said a large part of the increase in input price is imported potassium for fertilizer that has been hit with tariffs, driving up the cost. Combined with the rising cost of insurance and the struggle to find seasonal employees, various farming issues were presented to Klobuchar.

The government payments and disaster relief have helped in some aspects of the net income issue, Purfeerst noted.

Klobuchar said there were a few payments in the Big Beautiful Bill passed in July, but Congress is now trying to pass a farm bill to make program changes, as well as reverse some of the SNAP cuts, to assist farmers further.

Jim Purfeerst suggested consideration for a future bill.

“It would be nice in the next farm bill if we could get a permanent disaster relief in there for a person to know up front — if he is having problems — you’ve got help,” he said.

Additionally, during their conversation with Klobuchar, Matt Purfeerst asked her to continue supporting crop insurance subsidies, as they “provide a good safety net” for farmers.

Then, Klobuchar spoke about the current state of the tariffs. She said many tariffs were imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act statute. However, a case was made that tariffs could not be imposed under that statute. The case was won in a trade court and will now be heard by the Supreme Court.

“People are not sure what’s going to happen, so they could actually throw out the tariffs and say ‘This isn’t Congress’s job and this statute isn’t right.’” she said. “I think that would be good for the future of farming. I want to overturn the tariffs, but then we’ll have some short-term issues of trying to get that money back and where that money’s going. We’re going to have to figure all that out.”

Klobuchar said that in a time of such uncertainty, they need decisions made and to put a stop to the back-and-forth changing of tariffs, which has been seen with the Trump Administration. If the tariffs are upheld, she said, they can at least move forward.

“Then perhaps that’ll make the countries negotiate something, and get something reasonable that won’t be harmful to your markets,” she said.