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US-China trade war
WorldUnited States & Canada

US farmers swamped by trade war tariffs and unprecedented rains

  • Heavy weather is killing spring plantings, compounded by loss of Chinese market
  • The financial strain of low crop prices, aggravated by the poor weather and politics, may be escalating farm-related suicides

Reading Time:8 minutes
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Bill Gordon, of Worthington, Minnesota, views his washed-out farmland. Photo: Xinyan Yu
Daniel Bases

Minnesota proudly proclaims the state is the land of 10,000 lakes.

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“I bet you there are 100,000 lakes in Minnesota right now. It’s just crazy,” says fourth-generation farmer Bill Gordon.

Gordon, much like farmers all across America, has missed most of the spring planting season on his 2,000 acres in Worthington, Minnesota, because of record-breaking snow, rain and flooding that continues to inundate prime farmland and threatens the next harvest and more.

The financial and mental strain on American farmers, brought on by decade-low prices for crops – the result of years of oversupply due to strong harvests – is being exacerbated by the weather and politics.

So even if farmers get the crop to harvest, they fear the trade war now raging between the US and China will rob them of a critical market. Beijing has sharply cut its purchases of US soybeans, which over the last decade has averaged, annually, US$11.3 billion in sales, according to US government data.
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In 2018, soybean exports to China totalled US$3.1 billion, a drop of nearly 75 per cent from 2017, the US data shows.

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