American agriculture has never been more productive, yet the system supporting it has become increasingly fragile. Farmers can produce extraordinary yields and still struggle to generate durable profits, while rising costs, concentrated markets, dependence on government support, aging farm ownership, input vulnerabilities, and intensifying global competition expose structural weaknesses that higher yields alone cannot solve.
That is the central argument of Building the Missing Market: A National Strategy for American Agriculture, a new S2G report by Grant Leslie and Aaron Rudberg. The report calls for a fundamental shift in how American agriculture measures success, from yield per acre to risk adjusted profit per acre, meaning how much a farmer actually keeps from each acre and how reliably they keep it once costs and risks are accounted for. But changing the measure is only the beginning. Farmers who want to grow something different often lack the market around them: a committed buyer, a fair price, the financing and infrastructure to make the transition viable, and access to the innovation needed to manage it successfully.
In this episode, report co-authors Aaron Rudberg and Grant Leslie are joined by Al Tank, an Iowa farmer, entrepreneur, and agriculture and trade policy expert. They discuss why the current farm bill may provide farmers with needed short-term certainty without addressing the underlying structural problems, why agriculture belongs in the same national security conversation as semiconductors and critical minerals, and why innovation, capital, policy, and market demand have to move together.
The conversation ultimately asks what it would take to build a different system over the next decade, one in which a farmer who wants to grow something different has a real buyer, a fair price, and financing that allows them to make the transition without betting the farm.
Chapters:
05:10 – Why This Report, and Why Now
08:08 – Shifting the Goal from Higher Yield to Higher Profits
11:03 – Who Moves First: Farmers or Buyers?
14:24 – A Dairy Success Story and Food as National Security
16:32 – Why the Current Farm Bill Falls Short
20:34 – How Farm Payments Discourage Change
24:59 – The 10-Year Plan in Three Phases
29:09 – Getting New Farm Technology to Market Faster
34:47 – What Success Looks Like in 10 Years
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