CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz on Thursday spoke with fourth-generation farmer John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association in Boydton, Virginia, and Kim Barnes, CFO of Pawnee County Cooperative Association, based in Larned, Kansas, about how a combination of Trump’s USAID funding freeze and subsequent tariffs are impacting their livelihood.
“The consequences of President Trump and Elon Musk's decision to gut USAID is hitting home,” Prokupecz reported. “The Supreme Court yesterday rejected the funding freeze but when the money flows again, no one knows.”
“[Boyd] grows wheat, corn and soybeans here on his thousand-acre farm in southern Virginia,” Prokupecz said. “He also founded the National Black Farmers Association, and he's no fan of President Donald Trump.”
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Boyd made it clear, ”The president casts a net of uncertainty every time he makes one of these wild announcements that people are saying, ‘yay!’ Tariffs to China, tariffs to Mexico, tariffs to Canada. USAID – It's over. It's done. Every time he makes those types of drastic announcements, he effects America’s farmers.
“We take it totally, totally for granted, and what we're doing in this country right now, we're gambling with all that,” Boyd said. “Gambling with farmers’ lives, gambling with my life, gambling with my livelihood, man,”
As Prokupecz reported, Boyd, like many farmers, “[relies] on loans to plant for the upcoming season, with the hope that the harvest will pay it off and bring home some profit.”
Boyd noted a glaring challenge with receiving loans.
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“They want you to show them on paper how you're good for that operating loan and how you're going to pay it back,” he said. “I can't pay it back with $8 beans and $6 beans and $3 corn.”
Prokupecz also met with Kim Barnes, CFO of the Pawnee County Cooperative Association, who manages grain elevators in Kansas “where farmers will bring their grain that they've harvested.”
“All these bins are full and they're full of milo,” Barnes said. “That's $5 million worth of grain … but we don't have any market for it. There's nobody wanting to buy it.”
“Five months ago, Barnes says USAID bought over 200 million metric tons of milo from American farmers,” Prokupecz explained. “Today, with no market for that grain, he's desperate. One potential lifeline is a proposal in Washington for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to continue the USAID food distribution program.”
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Barnes however isn’t optimistic.
“Yeah, I have four children and I know that my kids have watched me scuffle, you know, throughout my career, and they're not going to want to do this if this administration continues to make it more difficult than it is,” he said.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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