US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better."
Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better.
Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand.
We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.
The thing is, this isn't even the first time US ag has wrecked itself with foolish trade wars.
In the runup to the Civil War, US cotton plantations decided to stop exporting cotton. Why?
Because the British Empire's textile mills ran on cotton from US plantations.
Without Southern cotton, the British textile industry would be brought to its knees.
And that would force the British Empire- with the world's most powerful navy- to help the US South in its fight for "freedom."
At least, that's what cotton plantation owners THOUGHT would happen.
What actually happened? Egyptian cotton.
With lots of fertile farmland and desperate for something to sell for cash on international markets,
Egypt's leadership dumped resources into building up cotton farming in Egypt.
By the time the US Civil War was over, so was the US cotton industry.
Egypt had ramped up to growing so much cotton, nobody really needed any from the US South anymore.
This is why "Egyptian cotton" is a thing now!
Egypt grew a little cotton before all that, but not a "main export industry & household name" amount.
This is why it's so important that US agriculture quit its "positive vibes only!" strategy and actually learn from its own mistakes.
So we can stop repeating them already.
Anyway, here's the next Egyptian cotton: Argentine & Brazilian soybeans.
https://mishtalk.com/economics/us-soybean-exports-to-china-drop-to-zero-argentina-and-brazil-win/
Ope this is going off
Ok folks! My Congressman is a MAGA clown who's on multiple ag committees.
As a farmer, I need ag policymakers with a spine who tell Trump no.
So for every donation to Kim Hardy, who's running against my
Congressman, I will post one (1) ag fact.
Farm fact: the South is famous for clayey red soil, but a lot of it is actually... sand. Like beach sand. See the yellow on the map here.
Why? It IS beach sand. That's where the shoreline was during the Cretaceous.
This has Certain Consequences for agriculture in the South!
Your classic grain belt-type farming- grain, silos, tractors, livestock to eat all the grain- is what the US considers "real farming."
And it likes big flat plains.
So when there's big flat plains in the US, that's kinda what we like to do.
But in the South? Our big flat plains are mostly deep, DEEP coastal sand.
And grain DOESN'T LIKE SAND
We aren't gonna thrive trying to play the Midwest's game on sand y'all. What are we doing
Attempting to farm Midwest-style on sand has led a lot of people to describe Southern soils as "bad."
This is false. Slanderous, even.
Sand is great!
Root crops love it! It's soft! Long skinny roots like carrots can push downward without hitting rocks or clay pans & turning into this
Trees like "well drained soil," which is just fancy words for "it doesn't get soggy."
Nothing stays un-soggy like sand. Every time it rains, the water runs right through it like a sieve.
Yeah that's annoying sometimes! If it STOPS raining for a week the crops panic!
But it sure is well-drained
Ok farm facts are back!
China is so much of the global soybean market, you can't make up losing them by selling to other countries. There isn't enough soybean demand in the world to fill that dent.
And farmers... know that.
And it's just not likely to get better anytime soon.
The first time the US started a trade war with China... what can I say. They noticed. They worked with other countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to buy their crops & invest in growing more of them.
A helpful primer on how major soybean buyers like China are viewing the US's new penchant for trade wars.
Really appreciate the writers' commitment to breaking it down so a 5-year-old can understand it
https://asiatimes.com/2025/09/brazil-will-remain-chinas-preferred-soybean-supplier-not-the-us/
Anyway, here's what this all means.
US soybean farmers have two options.
Grow something else, or get welfare checks forever.
There is no third option.
So which option are US farmers leaning toward?
Let me put it this way: I haven't run across anyone saying "I'm thinking of growing something else" yet.
They're surely out there, but not amongst the chosen spokespeople of the sector.
When I ran for office in 2024 (NC Commissioner of Agriculture), I ran on a platform of "We need to stop making our state's farms all about cheap bulk crops for China."
I said it a little nicer than that. But there's a reason that was my platform.
I saw this coming!
That's not because I'm a genius with a crystal ball either! Everyone who was paying attention saw it coming.
Like China. They spent the last four years investing in soy farming in Brazil, Argentina, etc.
Because of this, and Trump's popularity, I knew there were very good odds the farmers in our state would lose their markets.
(NC doesn't export much soy. But we do export lots of pork, chicken, & tobacco to China.)
We had to be ready to pivot away from bulk exports to China.
To do that, it takes leadership that knows how.
That means both the technical know-how on investing in new crops, AND the will to do so. Leadership that isn't in the pocket of the meat & tobacco companies.
That's what I ran on.
That's why I'm in a unique position to tell you how US farmers warm up to the idea of "It's time to grow something else."
They don't.
To review: there are only two paths forward for a lot of US farmers.
The "grow something else" option is anathema to a lot of them, that means a whole lot of US farmers are banking on the other path.
Get bailouts forever.
I'm sure they're not putting it in those words to themselves. But... that is the only other option.
So now we need to talk about how the US is emerging into a dictatorship right now, and how agriculture has thrown in its lot with that happening.
When Trump bailed out farmers in his first term, that was executive branch orders. Congress had nothing to do with it.
So already setting up a pattern of "Who cares about checks & balances? Or how Congress is supposed to be in charge of the US's budget? I'm gonna rule unilaterally. Like a king. And you support me, so I like you, and here's your money."
And that's what I'm seeing this time around as well.
Congress can stop the trade war, AND budget bailouts.
But the farm sector isn't even bothering to ask Congress for anything.
It's all pleas, for money, directed towards Trump himself.
And the farm sector won't criticize Trump or his actions. It's not "Hey Trump your policies stink." It's "We love you but this'll be hard for us…Money please!"
That's the dictatorship playbook.
Kiss the dear leader's ring. Support him. Expect kickbacks.
And most of all, ignore Congress. Do not even acknowledge that there are supposed to be checks & balances protecting you. That would ruin the illusion of an all-powerful strongman on top- that you desperately want to be real.
Because no sane country, where leaders are accountable to voters, would ever decide to bail out people who openly & freely voted to destroy their own business.
The farm sector chose to help bring Trump to power. They chose to engage with him as you would an all-powerful dictator.
Because they saw that making him one is a good way to get easy money.
I know we have a folklore of farms being, like, the traditional beating heart of democracy. A nd that's such a nice idea!
But this is what's really happening.
We need to see how much work the farm sector's doing to undermine our republic. We need to name this for what it is.
I want farmers to think very carefully about if this is the kind of country we want to leave for our kids.
And if it's not, we need to wake up and do the work it takes to live in a free country.
"Freedom isn't free" isn't just for soldiers.
It's for all of us.
And sometimes it just means "If you're lucky enough to be entrusted with land, do a good job with it.
"Don't just shoot yourself in the foot & grovel for refunds."
Well that's enough from me for now.
Tonight's farm fact: sometimes entire sectors of the economy jump into bed with dictators, and agriculture is no exception.
I'm not trying to alarm everyone, I just thinking seeing agriculture's role in all of this helps make it easier to get our arms around what's happening. And respond appropriately.
Don't take this as a fire alarm. Take it as a few tiles that help the whole mosaic of current events make more sense.
Thank you for saying all of this.
There is no workers' party in the u.s.
Monnied Democrats will tolerate a successful socialist or a pro-worker if they can't get rid of them, but they will be cheated out of full dues for embarassing WASP establishment or corprate doners.
Labor law Article 7 makes it legal to fire someone for associating with communists specifically.
No such law that makes being kkk or nazi firable offence.
You're thinking of the timeline where Malcom X and Joe Hill died of natural causes late in life.
edit:
oops. this took off. here's a little citation.
I reccomend skimming the section, if not most of the document, just to see how awkwardly it sits with the rest of the workers rights protecting list.
No more reds in the union, I hear.
https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964
UNLAWFUL EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES
SEC. 2000e-2. [Section 703]
(etc)
(f) Members of Communist Party or Communist-action or Communist-front organizations
As used in this subchapter, the phrase "unlawful employment practice" shall not be deemed to include any action or measure taken by an employer, labor organization, joint labor management committee, or employment agency with respect to an individual who is a member of the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization required to register as a Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final order of the Subversive Activities Control Board pursuant to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 [50 U.S.C. 781 et seq.].
What did they grow before soy?
After peaking at 6.8 million farms in 1935, the number of U.S. farms fell sharply until the early 1970s. Rapidly falling farm numbers during the earlier period reflected growing productivity in agriculture and increased nonfarm employment opportunities. Since 1982, the number of U.S. farms has continued to decline, but much more slowly. In the most recent survey, there were 1.88 million U.S. farms in 2024, down 8 percent from the 2.04 million found in the 2017 Census of Agriculture. Similarly, acres of land in farms continued a downward trend with 876 million acres in 2024, down 3 percent from 900 million acres in 2017. The average farm size was 466 acres in 2024, only slightly greater than the 440 acres recorded in the early 1970s.
The "easy money" aspect is what endears Trump to the corrupt.
These aren't small family farms. They are international agribusinesses.
The corrupt Batista Brothers of Brazil got a bailout courtesy the American taxpayers while smaller operations were scooped up cheap by billionaires.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-farmers-bailout-brazil-brothers-1427346
Trump rewards his agribusiness donors like Ron Cameron as well as his foreign billionaire supporters like the Batistas
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/05/16/company-owned-by-brazilian-crooks-received-62-million-in-trump-bailout-cash-meant-for-struggling-u-s-farmers/
1/
2/
I suspect that one of the corrupt bargains between Trump & large agribusiness is a solution to their "labor problem". Koch Network believes it is an outrage to pay for labor, never mind a fair & livable wage.
Entities like Koch Poultry in Mississippi have regularly scheduled ICE raids on paydays.
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/feds-indict-poultry-execs-after-2019-mississippi-ice-raids-no-charges-for-koch-peco/
They are expanding because they look forward to a profitable future with unpaid labor from detainees & corrupt convict leasing schemes.
1/
One day shy of a year after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed poultry plants across Mississippi and arrested 680 undocumented workers, ICE and the U.S. Department of Justice announced their first indictments against executives at the targeted companies.
2/
The private prison industry paid handsome bribes... ahem campaign donations... to get slave labor enacted nationwide.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/private-prison-behemoth-is-first-corporation-to-max-out-to-trump/
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/private-prisons-trump-what-to-know
With a prison labor, you can treat agricultural workers however you like
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/14/trump-administration-epa-prison-company-donations
DADEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A storm was looming when the inmate serving 20 years for armed robbery was assigned to transport fellow prisoners to their jobs at private manufacturers supplying goods to companies like Home Depot and Wayfair. It didn’t matter that Jake Jones once had escaped or that he had failed two drug and […]
3/
$11 billion dollars of goods & services come out of US penal labor, they're the envy of Putin's gulags & Xi's Uigher "re-education" camps.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
So when red state governors like Brian Kemp talk about "work requirements" for public services, this is what Republican billionaires bought; the reconstitution of slavery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Self-enrichment from the loopholes of the 13th Amendment.
Of course they won’t move to other crops. American farmers are just as lazy as I and others are. They don’t do research or try to analyze cuz that’s “work,” and when the shit hits the fan they’ll blame Dems cuz that’s the socialist party.
American Farmers are stand-on-own feet, fiercely independent, anti-handout (except where farming’s concerned), patriotic members of the MAGATS cult.
@sarahtaber Of course you could very well have made your fortunes making cheap bulk crops for China.
It was your government's shitfuckery vis a vis those bulk crops that killed your industry.
@sarahtaber You are teaching me about big subjects I know nothing about. Will you answer or clarify as we read along?
When you say “farm sector” do you mean industrialized farming or individual farmers? (I understand those groups may overlap.)
@sarahtaber according to this guy they can't grow anything else without taking a big financial hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mB5PqWhQeY
(Alas, he did not credit you.)
Have they considered going into the solar and wind power business?
I've seen those reports, but I was also needling the trump aligned conservatives as trump hates windmills, and is working to destroy solar because he loves seeing things destroyed by fossil fuels.
@sarahtaber What if Americans start eating a lot more tofu and/or soy milk?
Not that I think it will ever happen, or that domestic demand could completely replace Chinese demand, but hypothetically speaking.
@faoluin @sarahtaber well presumably combined with subsidies a whole two farms might remain viable.
Of course the problem there is the regime that would have to encourage that is the very same people who've spent the last decade or so in a moral outrage about specifically soy and how it turns people soft or sperm count or something, and are openly calling for public executions of the tofu eating woke.
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