Managing the Political Game in Ag Retail
There’s an old Chinese proverb that states “may you live in interesting times.” According to Daren Coppock, President and CEO at the Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA), the year of 2025 certainty qualified.
“It’s been an interesting year for us in ag retail, as you know,” said Coppock, speaking at the association annual meeting and conference this past December. “We had a number of challenges across the spectrum — from regulatory to legislative, tariffs and trade, weather, interest rates — you name it. It’s been a challenging year.”
Of course, he added, most ARA members were most concerned with the economic state of the nation’s growers going into the 2026 growing season.
“Anytime it’s tough on the farm, it’s tough on retail,” observed Coppock.
Tariffs have weighed heavily upon the finances for most of the agricultural market over the past year, he said. Adding to this confusion was the November 17, 2025, announcement that some tariffs’ rates were being reduced or suspended, depending upon the product’s country of origin.
“These created problems because there was no advance runway,” said Coppock. “People who ordered products before November 17 had to pay these tariffs. Those who ordered after November 17 didn’t. This created a competitive disadvantage, and answers have been hard to come by.”
The DC Climate
Not helping matters, he added, is the overall political climate currently prevalent throughout the nation’s capital.
“It’s like trench warfare,” said Coppock. “In Washington, DC, today, we work in an environment where the trenches between the political parties tend to get deeper, more dug in, and farther apart with each passing year. We have political parties with narrow control of Congress, and neither side wants to give the other one anything that might look like a win.”
Given this divide, Coppock told ARA attendees he believes coming up with a new Farm Bill anytime soon might be a difficult task.
“The coalition that has passed Farm Bills for 40 years has included rural and urban interests, so that the urban representative from Brooklyn, NY, would have reason to care about what the rural representative from farm country wanted,” he said. “But that’s largely gone now. We need to put this coalition back together somehow, or we might have seen the last Farm Bill ever.”
Despite these challenges, Coppock did point to several initiatives ARA has been successful in putting forward to help ag retailers and their grower-customers. This includes providing compliance information on the Endangered Species Act requirements for agriculture and working with The Fertilizer Institute to get important macronutrients such as potash and phosphate on the critical minerals list with the Department of Interior.
“This will help lessen the regulatory hoops producers have to jump through to increase the domestic capacity for these products,” he said.
He ended his speech by emphasizing why ARA matters, to its members and everyone doing business in the ag retail space.
“It’s been really hard to compromise in Washington,” said Coppock. “That makes ARA’s involvement as your representative in DC all that more important.”
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