Mark Twain would have loved this.
The story goes that Twain, arguably America’s greatest writer and humorist, was the originator of the witticism “Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.”
Research, however, confirms that the story — go figure — is itself a lie; Twain didn’t pen the quip. In fact, the quote wasn’t attributed to him until 1913, three years after his death and, tellingly, doesn’t appear anywhere in his writings or lectures.
So, who uttered the famous observation? The website, Quote Investigator, ends a long treatise on the topic with this simple declaration: “In conclusion, this famous saying is not attributed to anyone…”
Maybe that should also be the final word on American agriculture in 2025: This year is not attributed to anyone.
Sure, we could argue over who’s to blame for 2025’s record ag export deficit or spend months debating who’s responsible for this year’s market-rattling tariffs, basement-floor commodity prices or the tens of billions in federal farm subsidies.
But, as Twain might remind us, we already have people doing all those things to the very best of their limited abilities. They’re called Congress and the White House.
Instead, the best action we could take in the coming year to better serve all Americans — farmers, ranchers and every food buyer — is to simply stop digging the deepening hole we’re already in.
For example, if farm groups and ag politicians really believe their rhetoric that American ag exports should never be used as a political weapon, all should call on the White House to immediately end its crippling tariff programs on critical ag sectors like soybeans and beef.
Their continued silence, however, provides political cover for the White House. So, on Dec. 8, President Trump tossed another $12 billion into the tariff pit he created last April.
The money, forecast Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, will simply disappear. Moreover, Ragland told Reuters within days of the Trump announcement, “The federal aid will only address about one-quarter of the soybean losses.”
If he’s right, taxpayers could be on the hook for another $30 billion-plus if the White House tries to sweep up the mess it made in just the soybean market. And that’s on top of more than $50 billion in federal farm subsidies already committed to the 2025 crop year.
By comparison, the 1980 grain embargo Jimmy Carter imposed on the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan cost U.S. farmers an estimated $3.5 billion in lost revenue, or about $10.5 billion in 2025 dollars.
Despite all of this multi-billion dollar bungling, the White House continues to complain about the cost of U.S. Department of Agriculture programs like SNAP while rarely mentioning its costly bailouts of poorly performing ag policies or offering constructive ways to fix them.
For example, wrote Ohio State University ag economist Carl Zulauf for a recent farmdocDAILY post, USDA “administrative action raised the premium subsidy rate” for a popular crop insurance policy that is “estimated to raise the federal premium subsidies by $13.2 billion” over the next decade.
No one — not one farmer, food advocate or member of Congress — voted for this fattened subsidy. As Zulauf explains, it was a faceless, nameless USDA “administrative action” that added billions in cost to this shaky pillar of U.S. farm policy.
And that’s not all; another $4.4 billion boost in another crop insurance product was tossed into the pot via the 2025 reconciliation bill passed by Congress in July.
Each, Zulauf opines, “illustrates how the Federal budget process can be circumvented, calling into question its fiscal integrity and usefulness.”
Or, as Twain never said, figures don’t lie but we often lie to ourselves.
(The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Past columns, recommended reading, and contact information are posted at farmandfoodfile.com. © 2026 ag comm)
