Just when you think that it cannot get any worse for farming, here comes Trump. I mean the weather is just shredding a lot of farms with flooding. Prices for almost all the products that farmers produce, including cattle, have been on a downward trend for quite some time. Farmers were given a lot of bad advice from the Ag department, Sonny Perdue, almost all Ag reporters and so on. They told farmers to hold off on selling their crop because prices were going to go back to where they were once Trump negotiates a deal with China.
They were hoping that part of the deal was that China would buy truckloads of beans, corn, wheat as a gesture of good faith in the deal. I really don’t know what to tell farmers but that crap ain’t happening now. A lot of farmers are sitting with their entire last years crop in storage so they could sell their beans for 10.50 a bushel. It closed today for 8.08 a bushel. It cost the farmer somewhere north of 9.00 a bushel to produce it. They are in serious trouble and I don’t have any answers and Trump damn sure doesn’t.
I don’t see how a farmer buys new equipment when he cannot get the bank paid back. They certainly are not going to expand operations. So where we are today, Corn 3.50, Wheat 4.25, Soybeans 8.08, Cattle 1.11. If any farmer has costs below what they can get today, then they run one hell of an operation because I don’t know anyone that is making money at these prices.
The Chinese are quite serious about putting tariffs on all agricultural products from the United States. Retaliation is coming and it is going to get ugly. Farmers tend to be good people that stick with the decisions they have made. They have made a decision to stick with Trump. I feel for them but anyone could have seen this coming when he tweeted that trade wars are good and easy to win. The truth is quite the opposite but that is the reality that we are all living through. I feel sad that you have been asked to sacrifice for your country for a really stupid trade war.
Maybe Trump will do another bailout of the American farmer but who knows what will happen. He always just says “We’ll See”.