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At the Des Moines farmers market, tariffs and inflation squeeze vendors
In a conversation with Investigate Midwest, more than a dozen vendors describe how inflation, falling crop prices and tariffs are reshaping their livelihoods.
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Now in its 50th season, the Des Moines Downtown Farmers Market draws hundreds of vendors each Saturday from May to October, as shoppers buy flowers, baked goods, spices and produce. It’s a festive atmosphere with street musicians on the corners and families and their pets threading through the crowds.
But amid the vibrancy of one of America’s largest farmers markets is an undercurrent of anxiety.
President Trump’s tariff hikes, a global trade war in response, falling commodity prices and inflation have strained farmers’ budgets.
Investigate Midwest spoke with more than a dozen vendors on a recent September morning. Some said their reliance on U.S.-grown goods had insulated them from the latest tariffs. Others pointed to higher costs for bulbs, fertilizer and other imports.
Nearly all, however, agreed on one point: life is getting more expensive.
Meredith Nunnikhoven, Barnswallow Flowers
At the Barnswallow Flowers stand, Meredith Nunnikhoven arranges bouquets that mask the weight of her financial calculations. A fifth-generation farmer from Oskaloosa, she has spent 15 years growing flowers, along with chestnuts and row crops. Even with three acres of flowers and seven acres of chestnuts, she had supplemented the farm with an Airbnb just to cover bills.
“Our labor costs rose, our input costs rose over the last five years,” she said. “So we come to the market to leverage some of those increases. One of those is the tariffs.”
Tariff hikes under the Trump administration have directly impacted her bulb orders from Holland.
“I think it’s 10 percent to 15 percent … We just didn’t need this. It’s unfortunate,” Nunnikhoven said.
Nunnikhoven presold many of her tulips, daffodils, Allium and other spring bulbs before the tariff increases were imposed. “We had to eat part of that tariff,” she said.
Beyond flowers and chestnuts, Nunnikhoven also grows five acres of soybeans, a crop she may have to store this fall if prices don’t improve. Soybeans sit at the center of the trade war with China under the Trump administration.
“I might not be able to sell it for cash when I need to,” she said. “I might have to store it, which is an extra cost to me, to wait to see if the prices come in and if China comes in to start buying our crop.”
“To truly stay alive as a farmer in rural Iowa, you have to be diversified,” she added. “We never know what commodity prices are going to do with grain. I mean, look at what’s going on with soy right now. It’s really scary at this point.”
Jordan Clasen, Grade A Gardens
When Jordan Clasen founded Grade A Gardens in 2009, he had no farming background, just a love of working outdoors and an interest in food. Fourteen seasons later, his farm in Earlham has become a family enterprise: 30 acres with eight in vegetables, a few hundred chickens for eggs, meat birds, sheep, cows and fruit trees planted to anchor the future. He and his wife now juggle the farm while raising three children, with a fourth on the way.
“I feel like everything has risen price-wise,” said Clasen, now in his 12th season at the farmers market. “And I don’t follow global markets enough to say, ‘Oh, it’s because of the tariffs.’… But I feel like my expenses are quite a bit higher.”
The pressure doesn’t come only from supplies. Clasen employs two full-time workers at $17 an hour, a rate he once considered fair but now fears is too low to attract help. “Nowadays, it doesn’t seem like many people want to work for less than $20,” he said. “So it’s not only our expenses going up. We’re not necessarily selling our food for more.”
Weather adds another layer. This July was one of the wettest on record, followed by four dry weeks. “It’s a tough way to make a living,” Clasen admitted. “The weather is tough. Things are expensive. And then our food, it’s hard to charge much more than $2 a pound … You have to absorb the cost.”
To cope, he and his wife diversified. They host farm-to-table dinners, and she has launched a natural skincare line. “It’s just hard,” Clasen said. “You do it if you love it.”
Courtney Medina, Greenhouse Grower
For Courtney Medina, farming is a family legacy. Her father started the business in 1985 with a single greenhouse in Blue Grass, just west of Davenport. Today, Medina and her sister run the operation, tending to roughly 20 greenhouses, supplying seven farmers markets on Saturdays, and delivering to more than 40 grocery stores.
“I started to work when I was 11,” she said. Each Saturday starts before dawn, with the routine of heading to the farmers’ market. “I wake up at 2 and leave at 3 in the morning.”
The business has weathered its share of challenges, but the last two years have been especially tough. “We’ve seen a huge increase in the cost of everything, from the seeds to the fertilizer that we use,” Medina said. She estimates her costs have jumped an average of 12 percent.
For now, the family has absorbed those costs rather than passing them on to the customer.
“In the last two years, we have not raised our prices,” she said. “We raised them two years ago, but we haven’t raised them since.” Still, she acknowledges the cushion won’t last forever. “Probably another couple of years before we would have to increase our price to our customers in order for us to still make a profit.”
Tariffs may accelerate that timeline. The farm purchases its inputs a year in advance, so the effects haven’t fully hit yet. “At the end of this season is when we’ll buy for next season,” Medina said. “So I’m assuming we’re going to see a decent increase with the tariffs.”
Glenn Wigodsky, The Gourmet Granola
For Glenn Wigodsky, the global trade war feels like background noise. At his stall, Wigodsky is focused on his granola.
“The tariffs haven’t affected us at all,” he said. “We make food, and many of our products are protected by things like the USMCA.” Some food products are exempt from recent tariff hikes under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
His honey, sourced from around the world, and his oats, which come from Canada, have grown cheaper. “Those have actually gone down in price recently,” Wigodsky said.
The only exception, he explained, is coconut oil. But even that has nothing to do with tariffs. “It has everything to do with the crop yields,” Wigodsky said. “Farmers haven’t been prepared for the increased demand.”
In a year when many vendors describe rising costs as a constant pressure, Wigodsky’s story stands out. His supply chain, cushioned by trade agreements and global sourcing, has left him largely untouched. For him, the challenge is not geopolitics but keeping pace with customers who have come to expect his gourmet granola every Saturday morning.
Steve Glas, Breakfast Guys and Gals
At the Breakfast Guys and Gals stand, Steve Glas flips hash browns and builds breakfast sandwiches for the morning crowd. “I’ve been doing this since 2019 in this stand,” he said. He also owns a bakery stall nearby with his sister, Amy, called Big Sky Bread.
Asked about tariffs, Glas was direct. “The tariffs really haven’t affected me at all,” he said. “We only use local products here. Nothing imported.”
Inflation is another matter.
“The prices dramatically increased last year, well over the last three years, because of the inflation,” Glas said. “Some of my stuff doubled in cost in two years.”
From last fall to this spring, the increases slowed, rising only about 2 percent, Glas said.
Still, inflation left a mark. To keep serving the market, he split the burden with his customers. “I absorbed a little, and we put it into the price.”
Jennifer Knox, Saltlickers
In the basement of her home, Jennifer Knox blends herbs and spices into the signature mixes of Saltlickers, a seasoning business she has run for 13 years. “We make herb and spice-infused seasoning salts and finishing sugars with no preservatives,” she said. “We do all the blending in our commercial kitchen.”
But the spice market, she warns, is on the brink. “It is a market that is going to be wrecked by tariffs,” Knox said. “Many of the spices that we enjoy in America, like cinnamon, ginger and cumin, they come from places where the tariffs are going to be 30 percent and 40 percent. Indonesia, India … those tariffs are going to be out of sight.”
The increases began before the new administration even took office. “We started to see them going up probably last December. Even before the inauguration … it was slow at first, but now it’s really jumping up,” she said. Cinnamon has been especially difficult. “Our cinnamon provider, Red Ape, they’re terrific … they can afford to actually pay their workers. If Red Ape goes out of business, the people who work in that region, the people who work for Red Ape in Indonesia. That’s bad, very bad.”
For now, Knox has absorbed the costs. “We’ve never increased the prices of our products,” she said. “But we won’t be able to. There are just some blends we won’t be able to make anymore.”
Packaging materials, most from India, also increased around 10 percent.
“I don’t know if the business is gonna make it,” Knox admitted. “We just won’t be able to make a lot of the blends that we make. We’ll have to make other blends … I’m psyched to get on those. I don’t know if people are going to eat them.”
Alicia Potter, Great River Maple
At the Great River Maple stand, Alicia Potter pours samples of syrup, each bottle representing hours of labor in the northeast corner of Iowa. “It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup,” she explained. “It’s a long cooking process, but it is a labor of love, and we do love what we do.”
The production is entirely local, but the supplies are not.
“Canada is actually known for maple syrup. So a lot of our equipment, or a lot of our bottles and everything, come from Canada,” Potter said. That reliance has made her business more vulnerable to tariffs.
“Instead of having a bunch of different options, it’s actually limited where we can get it from. We can still get it. It’s a little bit more pricey. Some of our dealers have stopped dealing in the bottles that we used to get from them. So it does take more planning … we can’t get it at the last minute anymore.”
The strain shows up not only in supply costs but in sales. “We usually plan on a 10 to 15 percent increase in sales for each event we do,” Potter said. “But we’ve noticed either it has stayed the same, or it’s actually decreased in comparison to last year’s sales.”
She isn’t sure whether tariffs are directly to blame. “I think people are nervous, and I think it’s because of that,” she said. “They’re not sure and they’re not secure, so they’re not going to be spending their money. They’re going to save their money.”
Arturo Reyes, Reyes Tamales
Arturo Reyes opened Reyes Tamales a little over a year ago. Now he works full-time at the Downtown Farmers Market and at other markets around the area, selling tamales and aguas frescas with the help of his family. “We’re a family business, about four or five people,” he said in Spanish.
The costs of making tamales have risen quickly. “When I started this, especially the husks … they are corn husks that usually come from Mexico. The increase has been more than, I think, about 50 percent,” Reyes explained.
Higher meat prices have also added pressure. “Meat is another product whose price has risen, especially chicken. Chicken in particular went up significantly over the past 10 months, and although it has come down a little recently, the increase was still very steep.” He noted that the chicken he buys comes from the United States.
He estimates that the price of chicken rose by about a $1 per pound. For a small food business, that difference weighs heavily.
Despite those higher costs, Reyes has chosen not to raise his prices. “I’ve had to absorb it so far,” he said. “Since I started until now, especially during this season, prices have stayed the same.”
The result has been a cut into his earnings. “Maybe about 20 percent …,” he said, “which is a lot for a small business.”
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism. Visit us online at www.investigatemidwest.org
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