Facing a delayed Farm Bill and cost pressures, rural Kansans decide between a senior Ag Committee Republican and a pastor pledging bipartisan independence.
With the 2026 election less than a week away, a new farm bill hanging in the balance and farm margins shrinking, the Kansas Senate race has become a high-stakes clash over Washington’s agricultural agenda. Incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton are both aggressively courting the state’s rural vote, offering vastly different blueprints. In a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, the farm vote has become the ultimate battleground.
Kansas producers are feeling the squeeze. Input costs, delayed Farm Bill negotiations and export markets have placed agriculture at the forefront of the state’s political discourse. Both candidates are vying for the rural vote, but they are offering farmers and ranchers sharply different approaches to trade, labor and input costs.
Sen. Marshall: Fortifying Title I, Expanding Biofuels and Slashing Red Tape
For Marshall, a fifth-generation farm kid and current member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the focus remains on fortifying the foundational programs that keep Kansas agriculture afloat. He emphasizes farmers need greater certainty from Congress.
“Senator Roberts always taught me, go sit down on the tongue of the wagon and talk to the farmers,” Marshall says.
He names crop insurance, farm bill support for Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, biofuels and input costs among his priorities. He points to personal experience — watching a family wheat crop damaged by rain — helps him understand the role of crop insurance.
He places the blame for the delayed farm bill squarely on partisan politics in Washington, noting that getting it across the finish line with robust Title I funding (ARC and PLC) remains his highest priority. Alongside crop insurance, Marshall is a vocal champion for year-round E15 and the 45Z tax credit, which he says he specifically lobbied President Trump to implement.
“It’s going to allow ethanol plants to give the farmers about 25 to 50 cents a bushel more that practice regenerative agriculture,” Marshall says. “Every ethanol plant in Kansas is now expanding because of it.”
Marshall is also acutely aware of the pain at the pump for producers. Citing a lack of domestic refining capacity and global conflict, Marshall says he worked with President Trump to secure $8 billion in diesel relief for farmers. “Glad to get this $8 billion out the door for a short-term solution,” Marshall notes, adding that long-term fixes require cutting the red tape that prevents new refineries from being built.
On the broader economics of farming, Marshall argues producers have too little leverage when buying inputs and selling their crops.
“Farming is the only business where we’re takers on the input side and on the output side as well,” he explains.
He calls for more competition in markets for fertilizer, seed, equipment and agricultural commodities, and says regulation can contribute to consolidation. “How do we get the farmer to make more of the money?” he asks, describing the share captured between farm inputs and the sale of crops as a concern.
He points to bipartisan work on rural issues as part of his record, citing collaboration with Sen. Peter Welch on whole milk in schools and rural broadband, and with Sen. Bernie Sanders on community health centers and mental health services.
Marshall’s message to farmers and ranchers blends policy proposals with a personal appeal. Recalling lessons from his grandparents and his work at a sale barn, he says agriculture taught him about family, community and hard work.
“Rural Kansas, rural America is the spiritual backbone of this country,” he summarizes. “We don’t want someone in Washington telling us what we should be teaching our kids at school. We don’t want to be strangled by Washington. Look, we are the original conservationists. Again, I go back to remember my grandfather was building terraces to prevent soil erosion. You know, just those simple things that that we’ve done for decades. So I’m just grateful to be part of it. Grateful to to be the Kansas Senator on the Ag Committee representing these values and this way of life that I was born and raised on, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect them.”
Adam Hamilton: A Listening Tour, Targeted Trade and Bipartisan Labor Reform
Hamilton, a Leawood pastor, acknowledges he doesn’t have a background in farming. Instead, he says his strategy is to defer to the experts: the producers themselves.
“I am not an agricultural expert, and I’ll never pretend I know better than Kansas producers,” Hamilton says. “As a pastor of a big church with diverse viewpoints, what I am an expert at is listening. That’s exactly what I’ll do, and that’s what separates me and my opponent — he’s not listening when producers are telling him that input costs are too high or that tariffs are too unpredictable.”
Hamilton is focusing his campaign on the economic pressures hurting family operations. He recalls speaking with young, conservative farmers in Ottawa who are struggling to pay off notes as phosphate prices have doubled and interest rates rise. To combat this, Hamilton argues for ending reckless foreign conflicts, rebuilding trade relationships with Canada for potash and establishing an American presence in Morocco to facilitate phosphate imports.
“We have to make sure that crop insurance and the farm safety net remain strong enough that they account for farmers’ cost squeeze,” he says. “They went for years without relief, and that can’t happen again.”
Hamilton also argues both parties have failed on trade over the last decade, calling for Congress to demand durable, permanent and binding deals that open markets abroad and address non-tariff barriers in Europe and Mexico.
“We also need to address non-tariff barriers where we already have market access — in Europe and even Mexico governments will use pretextual health or safety requirements to turn away American grain or beef exports — we have the safest and highest quality ag products in the world, they just don’t want to compete with our farmers,” he explains.
Hamilton is also calling for a bipartisan solution to the farm labor crisis, advocating for year-round H-2A visas and a pathway to legal status for farm and ranch laborers with clear records who would have been legal under the new system.
“I would like for Kansas producers to not have to think about Washington D.C. every day,” Hamilton says. “Just to be able to trust that we, as their elected representatives, will do our jobs and listen to agricultural leaders when they’re speaking for their members. They deserve stable, predictable policies that enable them to feed the world, make a living and pass their farms to their children if they wish. Producers have enough to worry about without wondering if a tweet is going to upend markets that day.”
He adds he’d like to see a reversal of the partisan drift in agricultural policy, pledging to bridge divisions across the aisle.
“I intend to lead on that and bring together my friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle,” he explains. “Agriculture’s great strength is its tradition of bipartisan policymaking. We need it to make sure producers get a strong farm bill on time no matter who is in power. My Democratic colleagues should have voted for the Senate farm bill — it was a good bill.”
Hamilton has made securing a seat on the Senate Agriculture Committee his highest legislative priority.
“Agriculture is the biggest driver of the Kansas economy,” Hamilton says. “We have a great bipartisan tradition in this state of shaping agriculture policy. Bob Dole, Pat Roberts and Dan Glickman teamed up on behalf of Kansas. If Jerry Moran and I are both serving on the Ag Committee together, Kansas producers will have a champion on both sides of the aisle in the Senate.”
Hamilton argues representation across party lines would protect Kansas producers from the extremes of both parties.
“Kansas producers need bipartisan champions who are focused on responding to their needs, not chasing cameras to talk about our most divisive issues,” he says.
To gain traction with rural voters, Hamilton is openly parting ways with coastal Democrats, criticizing members of his own party who lack agricultural understanding and defending biotechnology.
“Many Democrats from non-agricultural states don’t understand the ag industry,” Hamilton summarizes. “They might mean well, but some of those policies would hurt farmers and make it harder to afford healthy food. Some Republicans have adopted these positions now very recently, for instance attacking crop science and crop protection tools. Whatever the political trends of the day or of our parties, our job as ag state Senators is to stand up for Kansans.”
Seniority vs. New Seat: What’s at Stake for Kansas Ag
As Election Day approaches, Kansas farmers and ranchers face a stark operational choice. Do they return a fifth-generation farm kid and incumbent senator who has positioned himself on the Agriculture Committee to defend Title I reference prices, expand biofuels through the 45Z tax credit and fight for deregulation? Or do they elect a challenger promising to rebuild trade predictability, expand year-round agricultural labor and form a bipartisan tag-team with Sen. Jerry Moran?
In a state where agricultural policy has historically transcended party lines, the winner will not only shape the next farm bill — they will define Kansas’s voice in Washington as producers navigate one of the tightest margin environments in a generation.
Source - https://www.agweb.com
