The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Farmers being forced to sit on a record soybean crop
DES MOINES, IOWA — American farmers still working to get out their remaining soybeans after a weather-plagued harvest season are struggling to figure out what to do with a record crop now that their traditionally dominant export market is largely closed.
Usually by this point in the year, 100-car trains filled with North Dakota soybeans would be moving to ports on the West Coast destined for China. But this year is different, after China all but stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
Fearful of economic failure, farmers are frantically trying to determine how to store a potentially 1 billion-bushel surplus until it can be sold at a decent price.
Farmers have been mostly patient with the president and his plans to realign trade deals to improve U.S. interests, but the loss of markets is hitting their bank accounts hard.
“As I’ve heard many people say, you can’t pay the bills with patriotism,” said Grant Kimberley, a farmer and the market development director for the Iowa Soybean Asso- ciation. “You’ve got to have money and right now we as an industry are a little short on that because we’ve had a major hit in our number one market and it’s been reflected in a major drop in prices.”
North Dakota farmers who sell at the current cash price of around $7.20 a bushel do so at a loss given that the cost of production is about $8.50.
Trump has created a onetime $12 billion program to compensate for the loss in trade, and soybean farmers are to get the largest share of the money. But even with payments from that fund, which amount to about 82 cents a bushel this year, they still fall short of breaking even.
Farmers have been strug- gling for five years as the cost of land, fertilizer, chemicals and seed have remained high, but net income has fallen.
Some who rent their land or have accumulated high debt could be forced out of farming.
“Individually, we’ve got some problems out there,” said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. “This squeeze will be enough to put a few farmers out of business.”
Farmers produced a record U.S. harvest of 4.6 billion bushels this year, but the USDA reports exports to China are down 94 percent from a year ago since Chinese companies were ordered to stop buying American soybeans.
U.S. soybean farm organizations have cultivated other markets, including Egypt, A rgentina a nd Iran, and boosted sales to the European Union and Mexico. But that doesn’t make up for the gap left by the loss of the Chinese market.