'At the end of their rope': Trump-voting farmers beg president to halt his 'farmageddon'
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Mondovi, WI USA September 28, 2020 Farmer John with his John Deere 3020 Tractor holding out a Trump Banner and also an American Flag on the tractor.
Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) tells CNN that lawmakers are gathering “farmers’ feedback” on “how serious the situation is in rural America.” But farmers are already yelling loud and clear.
“This is not your ordinary farm crisis. We call it ‘farmageddon,’ and it’s really a tough time,” said Joe Jennings, the chief executive officer of Daitaas Holdings, a Memphis, Tennessee-based farm tech and software company.
Farmers across the U.S. are describing “increasingly dire circumstances stemming from a confluence of factors,” according to CNN, and most of those problems — including trade wars, immigration crackdowns, inflation and high interest rates — have President Donald Trump’s face on them.
“It just seems like things have stalled all summer long,” said Brian Warpup of trade deals that Trump failed to sign after declaring a painful trade war on international U.S. partners. CNN reports Warpup grows corn and soybeans, both of which were widely sold among international partners before Trump complicated sales with tariffs. “We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin.”
The world’s biggest soybean buyer, China, is currently refusing to buy American soybeans in retaliation to Trump’s behavior, and corn and soybean farmer Ryan Frieders tells CNN that storage concerns are “like a tidal wave of problems coming towards Illinois.”
The president also made a point to crackdown on immigrant farm workers in liberal states like California, and the resulting labor shortfall is leaving West Coast farmers “struggling” to find growers and harvesters for food items like sweet potatoes, which cannot be harvested through mechanization.
Farm bankruptcies could rise in the resulting chaos. The American Farm Bureau Federation already reports farm bankruptcies up 55 percent last year, and Ryan Loy, an extension economist for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, told CNN in July that they were up again in the first quarter of 2025.
CNN reports the pain on farmers is reminiscent of the trade wars Trump instigated in his first administration, when the federal government had to add $61 billion to the U.S. debt bailing out affected growers.
“It’s going to mean that there’s going to be farmers that are so far at the end of their rope, not able to meet their financial obligations,” said Kentucky soybean farmer and American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland, who has voted for Trump in every presidential election since 2016.
The BBC reports surveys showing more than half of rural respondents (54 percent) still supported Trump in September.
"We think the tariffs eventually will make us great again," Iowa dairy farmer and cheese producer John Maxwell told BBC.
Read the full CNN report at this link.