re: ‘It is full blown crisis already’ farmers say

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China has already switched to buying most of their agriculture from South America. They really have almost no leverage over US farmers anymore.

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But they have more leverage in the trade war

You say this as if it's a good thing that they're getting most of their agriculture from South America

It isn't. And that's a result of Trump 1.0 and his trade policies

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hey can and do but subsidies come with strings attached that most small farms aren’t large enough to produce a tangible amount.

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Thats not how it works

No farm directly get ethanol subsides - ethanol keeps the price inflated.

100ac of good corn aph ground will get just as much money through arc or crop ins per acre as 1000ac

Sounds like your dad's farm was a victim of economies of scale

Also 500ac ore 1000ac isn't a big, corporate farm

Of course farms get subsidies to grow corn for ethanol and yes 1000 acre farms are smaller than massive corporate farms but those corporate farms aren’t singular farms in many instances. They are 3-4 large farms consolidated under a corporation to produce said corn for said corporation at the expense of the corporation which receives subsidies that they pass on to the farmers. And no, most farms in America are much smaller than 1000 acres especially in heavily populated states.

Idk what farmers they are talking to but steers are going more per lb than they have in as long as I can remember. So no issues here.

Poor american farmer that is subsidized to the max. I have a few farmers in my family they gonna be ok.

I see a lot of comments in this thread regarding farming that aren't representative of all, or even most, farmers across the country.

Let me be clear I support was President Trump is trying to accomplish and do but the fact remains that these actions can and will make things incredibly difficult on farmers. A sector that has already had a rough 10 years or so anyways

Firstly, any example that involves somebody other than grain farmers and to some extent cotton farmers isn't a fitting example. We export a tremendous amount of grain and cotton. Not so much fruit, sugar cane, and other commodities at least not relatively speaking so they aren't as impacted by the tariff situation

I also several examples of large wealthy farmers. Those farmers are not the ones that will be "hurt" by this. Sure their farms won't be as profitable but they won't be at risk of becoming insolvent. The farmers this will hurt are your small farmers. The farmers who are always hurt and constantly evermore squeezed out of the market

I'll give my personal example

I grew up with a family farm that my father sold out of in 2014. We were still making money as a grain farming operation but the land value had gotten to be so exorbitant that it simply just didn't make sense to continue to take that kind of risk when we could sell out for a pretty large sum and invest the money into safer areas so that's what he did

Fast forward to about 2018 and I had done well enough in other areas that I had a little extra capital, the constant itch I've always had to be involved with Ag, and a friend who long story short had an opportunity for me to invest a relatively small amount into a relatively very small grain and cotton operation and so I did

We use VERY old equipment in an effort to keep costs down and have operated on a very tight budget. Things have not been easy at all. This operation has been on the edge of insolvency since we started it basically and that's even with the help of the decent amount of liquid capital i was able to inject into it on the front end to avoid the costs of borrowing. We have still had to borrow but my capital probably reduced the principal amount by half

This operation was teetering on insolvency BEFORE any of the new tariff efforts so needless to so say this likely will produce and even more difficult challenge

Almost nobody will read this long post and I don't want to pretend that difficulty in remaining solvent is some issue that's exclusive to grain farming. Everyone struggles and as I've said in other threads lately i don't know the solution.

I don't want even more government subsidies for the Ag sector

I don't want Trump to stop trying to enforce fairness in our trade economy

I also don't want even more small farms to fail

And when people to act like the farming industry is all full of shite to be claiming there are issues I have to take the time to object

I wish I knew a solution

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Idk what farmers they are talking to but steers are going more per lb than they have in as long as I can remember.

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As I'm sure you know totally different area of farming

And for what it's worth cattle prices being high is great for now but not sure what happens in 3 years when cattle farmers have cashed in by selling all their heifers and they either have to reinvest at whatever the price may be at that time or they have to get out of the cattle business

Two weeks ago a corporate farm in our area planted 8900 acres of soybeans in three days with their fleet of 36 row planters. Haven't heard yet how many acres of corn.
My dad was right when he said that the country would have been a lot better off if their had never been anything bigger than a three bottom plow tractor.

For highly perishable crops it’s a challenge. Margins are low to begin with and with costs going higher on all fronts it makes it difficult to plan. If we lose markets we’ll have a glut of product needing to find a home and quickly. In those situations it causes prices to crash. That puts growers in quite the predicament. Sell at a partial loss, or much smaller margin (which will crack double digits in a good market) and lessening your profits, or in a worst case scenario not selling it and eating all of the losses because the market is flooded to begin with.

As a result the food supply becomes unstable in the following years because they’ve lost money and they can’t just eat the losses. So they plant less acreage.