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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
NEWS
Mixed Market Farmers challenged by trade war, volatile weather GETTY IMAGES
By Brian Barth
A
FTER SEVERAL YEARS OF
cataclysmic headlines — dairy bankruptcies, rotting acres of soybeans, a spate of farmer suicides — 2020 brought a welcome reprieve with some good news for rural America. On Jan. 15, President Donald Trump signed a trade deal with China, the most significant truce to date in a dispute that has hit agriculture, especially soybean farmers, harder than any other industry in the country. Total U.S. farm exports to China
were cut nearly in half between 2017 and 2018, while soybean exports dropped about 75 percent. While the deal does not eliminate the tariffs that were already in place, it prevents a new round of tariffs from going into effect and gives a big, belated Christmas present to farmers: The deal commits China to the purchase of $200 billion worth of American goods over the next two years, including $40 billion in agricultural products — more than American farmers were exporting to the country before the trade war began. “It’s a great day for American agricul-
ture,” USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said of the deal. The federal aid doled out to farmers for the past two years to compensate for their losses would no longer be needed, he said. The trade war, coupled with recurrent flooding of Midwest farmland, led to a significant drop in planted corn and soybean acreage last year. While there’s no telling what Mother Nature will bring this year, farmers are gearing up to plant significantly more acres in hopes of reaping the benefits of the trade deal. But this is not to say that the agricultural economy is suddenly back to some
bucolic state. One bullet has been dodged, but heightened risk seems to be the new norm. Just ask the insurance industry. Michael Williams, an agribusiness insurance veteran who is a vice president at Travelers, said bad weather has become an ongoing woe for farmers across the country. “The No. 1 risk on our minds from an insurance carrier perspective — and I think on the minds of farmers and ranchers — is weather exposure. We see an increasing frequency and severity of damaging weather throughout the country, and our customers are feeling it.” Federal crop insurance addresses
