Farmers for Free Trade

Farmers for Free Trade

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
Farmers for Free Trade

With the farm and ranch report I'm Rick Worthington.

U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports are up again and trade associations for many different industries aren't happy about it.

Brent Bible is corn and soybean farmer and spoke on behalf of farmers for free trade. He says because farming has a small profit margin they rely on a lot of sales opportunities to help make profit and when margins are already small to begin with lost sales hit farmers right in the pocketbook.

One thing that I think it's important for folks to understand is that the price of corn and soybeans both because it's soybeans have gotten most of the attention. But certainly corn has suffered from a price perspective because of the tariff and the trade war as well. We have seen somewhere around 10 percent price reduction in corn and 20 to 25 percent now price reduction in the price of soybeans from about a year ago. Right now when we were in the beginning stages of this trade war and the trade negotiations.

And he says farmers are operating their business at a loss.

Doing that math at 10 and 25 percent. And I talked already about having a 10 percent margin. You can see how that's been wiped out. And then some. So we are operating at a loss now.

Bible says all it took was one Twitter post from the president to cut 50000 off the value of his on price crops. Bible says U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs are making vehicles and farm equipment more expensive for farmers further cutting into already nonexistent profit margins.

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