The Wall Street Journal reporters have been getting quite the education in agriculture these days. Rarely does a week go by that there isn’t major coverage in the WSJ on this “dynamic” industry (how is that for a positive adjective?) we are in. 

Price volatility, weather, interest rates, inflation, regulations and labor shortages, to name a few. Yet we sensed farmers would start to feel a lift late this winter when the relief payments were to hit. As the WSJ reported, that included the Biden administration’s $3 billion USDA funds as well as another $20 billion authorized by Congress through the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA encouraged farmers to plant cover crops and practice no-till. Exciting for the prospects of more conservation ag practices, but then the freeze came, and farmers worried about their contracts with the Feds. 

The alarm sounded. And it sounded again with President Trump’s tariff declarations on “Liberation Day” (April 2).

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and White House spokesperson Anna Kelly are calming agriculture’s fears, but the new relief packages can’t be developed until the impact is measured this fall, Rollins says. Farmers will need to leverage those relationships with their bankers until that time.

Wait ‘til the Dealin’s Done … 

I’m maintaining a “line-item” approval (or disapproval) of our new administration’s first 11 weeks in office. I’ve told friends, family and any of the rest of you who’ll listen that you can’t “final-grade” a negotiation until it’s complete.

That is, a good poker player doesn’t answer to the color-commentators while still holding the cards. The “game” has not yet been settled.

No, we don’t know the President’s pursued result, and every day brings a new “play,” with additional concessions and deals sure to come.

But a lot of brows are sweating these days, especially as the playing cards and the stakes rapidly rise. Even many of the “stay-the-course” Trump-leaning farmers are getting antsy; more than half said in a March AgWeb poll they can’t support their president’s use of tariffs as a bargaining tool. 

A Triple Whammy

Farmers are taking it in the shorts — and from every corner. It’s a triple-whammy influencing the price of their crops, their inputs and equipment.

Not only does more than 20% of farmers’ income come from exports, says the American Farm Bureau Federation, but farmers will get hammered by the tariffs on machinery and implements (what equipment doesn’t have foreign-made product or technology on it?) as well as pesticides and fertilizers. And every sector who relies on farmers for a living is already feeling the waves of an immediate ripple effect. 

One must work to keep confidence up. Bankruptcies and forced consolidations — throughout the ag ecosystem — were already knocking on the door at the end of 2024.

Soybean, No-Tillers in the Crosshairs 

During President Trump’s first trade standoff, $27 billion of farm income disappeared, with $4 billion forever lost (the balance met through relief programs).

Soybeans represented 71% of that lost income, as 60% of soybeans grown leave our borders as exports. As a result, China discovered it could satisfy its soy appetite via shipments from Brazil, which the U.S. has likely forever surrendered. Even so, China placed 34% tariffs on U.S. imports last week on what was left for our farmers to ship to the Red Dragon.

No-till in the U.S. has been primarily adopted by soybean producers – at 39% of the crop’s planted acres (second only to wheat). Thus, no-tillers are in for rocky seas.

David Legvold, an award-winning corn and soybean Minnesota farmer and regular presenter at our conferences, told the WSJ that “It’s scary because I really don’t know what my new crop will be worth if we’re in the midst of a trade war, which we are.”

More so than any other party, farmers — and no-tillers in particular — are in the crosshairs as a universal pawn in trade. You’ll recall the self-descriptive words of the simpleton brute Alex Karras in Blazing Saddles: “Mongo only a pawn in game of life.”

Concerns Abound

Before I joined my dad, Frank, in the family business, my formative years (1992-2003) were spent reporting on heavy manufacturing. Like President Trump, I too long for the manufacturing heydays of yesteryear.

What healthy industry did — for employment, the small communities surrounding the plant operations and the thousands of sub-suppliers — isn’t properly understood or valued by the average citizen. True and sustainable national wealth creation, as I was taught in my foundry days, arrives only through three means: “you mine it, you grow it, or you manufacture it.”

Yet I don’t believe all the “hard industries” can or should return in their prior form, and I dare say that some work should remain in lower cost nations — except in cases where manufacturing capacity is needed for our national security. With the enormous labor-shortage ahead of us, we’ll need every available ounce of talent for the more advanced and value-added manufacturing opportunities that exist today. 

So yes, I’m afraid Trump may be living in the past. Plus, there is the concern that if he has made a costly mistake —name a leader who hasn’t — will his own hubris allow him to make the necessary corrections? If he doesn’t trust economists on their odds of a full-blown recession, at least we know that the S&P plunge would’ve hit the family’s radar.

Earning Respect Again

A distant byproduct of all this could be for our country to agree that farmers’ sacrifice here, wanted or not, is deserving of note — and everyone’s respect. Maybe the realization that farmers are the “foot soldiers” of America of 2025 will quiet the armchair quarterbacks and their endless, so-called “expert” commentary on farm bill/subsidies, falsehoods about irresponsibility of farmers and, of course, their foolish definitions of those “#%@$! factory farms” that they like to spout off about.

Hopefully, that respect can also turn into a fair relief package that will be needed this year to stop the bloodletting on America’s farms.

Final Thoughts ...

I’ll leave you with a few thoughts on President Trump’s battle for equitable trade as well as the rampant — and incomprehensible — government waste.

First, the best way to avoid this painful series of DOGE events (and arguably the tariff situation) in the future is to be vigilant against waste and error occurring in the first place. Every dollar wasted is one that can’t be put toward a deserving use. And when things hit critical mass as they have in recent years, every worthy program — across every sector — is also at risk of being cut. Most now need to justify their existence to get going again.

It takes backbone, but one can say “no.” My former GOP governor here in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, did just that when he said no to $810 million in federal funding for a pork-laden railway program.

Second, I can’t resist a need — for all of us — to call B.S. on the increasing amount of misinformation spreading in this social media age, and the opposing “closed-ears” response to anything said about spending cuts. Returning control of certain programs to the states is a good thing, and can mean more resources for deserving causes. Attacking government waste, and supporting that which deserves support, should be a unifying — not a dividing — rallying cry. 

Third, in normal times, we’d all be better off with more “ag folk” in politics. Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley is the only grain producer in the U.S. Senate. 

“Real change takes disruption,” Rollins told the WSJ. “I’m talking to farmers every single day. They know the president has their back.”

I hope she’s right, and hope that the President is listening to her as well.

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