Tony Logan, left, and Bill Wiley. (Photo by Nick Evans/Ohio Capital Journal.)
You aren’t going to hear much about agricultural policy in this year’s stump speeches. Politicians may bemoan the cost of groceries, but the cost of seed, fertilizer and feed? Not so much. Still the industry is at the heart of many of the issues you will hear about.
For instance, the program helping many Americans afford those groceries, known as SNAP, gets funding through the Farm bill. The arrangement is a vestige of an earlier era in which urban and rural lawmakers tied their interests together in a durable bit of coalition building. That legislation, which includes important protections for farmers, faces significant headwinds despite a full court press from ag groups around the country. Politico reports some of the biggest ag interests are in Washington D.C. this week lobbying lawmakers to pass legislation.
And perhaps most notable, the tariffs central to former President Donald Trump’s past and future foreign policy agenda have been a nightmare for many farmers. After Trump imposed broad tariffs on China in 2018, the Chinese government responded in kind, resulting in sharp losses for U.S. farmers after the China imposed retaliatory tariffs of its own. The Trump administration had to pour more than $23 billion into a program to backstop farmers. Soybean exports to China have rebounded, but as production in Brazil has ramped up, farmers believe Chinese buyers are only purchasing their crops as a last resort.
Ohio’s farmers are a small voting constituency. According to a study by the industry group Feeding the Economy, there are only about 82,000 people directly employed in agriculture, or about 1% of registered voters. But when you factor in the businesses supplying those farmers, and the ones their produce supports — that is, the full scope of people affected by ag policies — Ohio’s food and agriculture industry represents more than 837,000 jobs.
Not everyone living in a rural community farms, but the industry’s impact on the rural economies is substantial. And while farmers themselves aren’t a monolith, the rural communities where they typically live reliably vote for Republicans.
Despite the challenges that came with the Trump administration, many remain committed to the GOP — even if some are uneasy with decision. Others have made a break with the Republican Party and are trying to carve a niche for themselves in a Democratic Party that hasn’t always known how make a place for them.
Tariffs
For all his rhetoric about immigration, former president Donald Trump’s most consequential impact on U.S. foreign policy may be his emphasis on punitive tariffs. For each frustration with Chinese economic policy, he offered the same hammer. Since he left office, President Joe Biden has largely maintained those tariffs and even doubled down with export restrictions on sensitive goods like semiconductors.
All of Trump’s arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, tariffs amount to a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses purchasing imported goods and materials. At the same time, Chinese retaliatory tariffs targeting U.S. made goods have stung exporters.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics noted China successfully calibrated its tariffs to punish Republican-leaning areas. Meanwhile, China has come nowhere close to its 2020 commitment to increase U.S. imports by $200 billion over two years.
U.S. farmers, particularly those growing soybeans, were left holding the bag. When the U.S. imposed tariffs, Chris Gibbs explained, the countries on the other end “had no choice but to retaliate.”
“Our soft underbelly in the United States is agriculture,” he said. “So, they have to retaliate — well, they didn’t have to, but that it was predictable that they would retaliate.”
Gibbs is an interesting figure in Ohio politics. The former chair of the Shelby County GOP left the party and became an independent at least partly because of the trade war. “For me,” he said, “we lost 20% of our value in soybeans just overnight.” Gibbs found his way to the Democratic Party after hearing former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan speak during his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid. Gibbs now leads the Shelby County Democratic Party.
He argued international trade relationships, which are vital for commodity crop growers, haven’t fully recovered from the damage inflicted by the trade war.
“As a rule, half of our soybeans go overseas,” he said, “so when we’re not making those sales, that depresses prices.”
“We also have a large crop coming off. So, good news,” he added. “You can never have too much corn, on the left hand; on the right hand, it does depress prices when you don’t have an outlet for it.”
Chris Gibbs. (Photo courtesy of Chris Gibbs.)
At an Ohio Soybean Association event last month, it wasn’t hard to catch that abiding sense of wariness. One forecaster after another offered outlooks that ranged from not-great to outright bleak, with November’s election as a likely pivot point.
During a panel discussion, Ohio Soybean Council official Brandon Kern described how Chinese buyers have seemingly relegated U.S. crops to a last resort.
“Instead of being a primary purchaser of U.S. soybeans, they have adopted a strategy, largely based on the tensions that have developed, to be the last resort for them now,” he said. “So, they’re only going to buy if they absolutely have to from the U.S., having preference for buying from Brazil.”
Tony Logan’s family has been farming in Trumbull County for six generations. Speaking after a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, he brought up the same trend of markets shifting in response to the trade war.
“I think that’s the reason why Argentina and Brazil have made great strides in kind of taking away some of our markets with China and other world trading partners,” he explained.
But for all the damage caused by the trade war, it didn’t shake support for Trump among most farmers. In the immediate aftermath, many argued the policy was a necessary confrontation even if it was painful. Speaking last month, Shelby County Commissioner Mack Knupp, a Republican who favors Trump, made a similar point.
“It could be argued that some of his tariffs and everything might have hurt the markets a little bit, but he, at least, held people’s feet to the fire,” he said. “Now we’re just kind of letting other governments walk on top of us a little bit, and it’s hurting us more than the tariffs ever did.”
The economy
In addition to worrying about how their crops will perform on international markets, farmers have economic concerns a bit closer to home. Even though inflation is beginning to ease, many complain those higher prices hurt them in two ways. First, the cost of inputs like seed, fertilizer, and equipment have all gone up. And second the higher interest rates meant to curb inflation have made it harder for them to borrow money to cover the gap.
Knupp explained his extended family has farmed for several generations but his parents didn’t. His grandparents helped him get started, “But I still don’t have a whole lot of access to capital,” he said.
“So, you know, borrowing money on an operating line right now at 8% interest, it’s just really driving input cost up in general,” Knupp said.
He argued increasing regulations for fossil fuel power plants mixed with the power demands of data centers are making farmers compete with solar companies.
“it’s driving cash rent prices up because absentee landowners that aren’t necessarily involved in farming are getting offered $1,000 an acre plus for solar, and we’re having to justify to them to keep it in agriculture,” Knupp said.
Knupp’s predecessor on the Shelby County Commission, Tony Bornhorst, brought up similar challenges. He emphasized how the higher cost of fuel makes it more expensive to get products to market and more expensive to grow them because it’s a component in fertilizer production. And while inflation stings right now, he worries as the Federal Reserve backs off, it may make a challenging hand even worse.
“I always felt they went too far on raising (interest rates) and they may jump to a half point (decrease)in September, which will defeat all the pain that we’ve gone through by dropping too fast,” he said. “So, I hope they stick at a quarter (percentage point).”
Like Knupp, Bornhost is a Republican and he plans to vote for Trump, too. But he doesn’t feel great about it. Even after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, he quipped, “Could you give me two new candidates?”
“I’m not a hard right, definitely not a hard left, but I would love two better candidates,” he went on. “But if I have to make — you know, I’m gonna hold my nose. I will be voting for Trump.”
Across the aisle, Gibbs sees the same financial pressures. “Costs are still high, particularly for fuels and repairs, repair parts, supplies,” he said. “Chemicals and seed and those core inputs have come down a little bit.”
“Comma, however,” he added.
Gibbs pointed to concentration among companies producing seed and fertilizer as examples. “Their prices at the retail gate will magically follow the price of the commodity,” he argued, rising when crop prices are high and holding steady when they fall.
“I’m not calling it nefarious,” he added, “maybe it’s just good business.”
Logan meanwhile worries about how corn production intersects with the fuel market. Much of the corn produced in the U.S. goes into ethanol because of the U.S renewable fuel standard. But Logan worries with more cars going electric and oil producers contributing heavily to Trump, that standard could get rolled back.
“I don’t see the likelihood of any expanding markets in either the biofuels, sustainable aviation fuels, or even renewables generally, if the Republican candidate obtains election,” he said.
Immigration and labor
Sitting across the table from Logan, Bill Wiley explained his family has been farming in Shelby County almost as long as Ohio has been a state. “Our little slogan on our letterhead is farming between Piqua and Sydney since 1813.” Two of Wiley’s ancestors, who gave the farm its name, were the first two elected officials in what was then Essex Township; his grandson will be the seventh generation to run the farm.
To Wiley, one of the most pressing concerns is labor.
“I bring in labor in a very complicated, expensive program called H-2A agricultural labor,” he explained. “And rather than rely on outside foreign contractors, I have been doing all the paperwork myself since 2000.”
The temporary agricultural worker visa program allows Wiley and other farmers to bring in workers when they can’t find adequate labor from U.S. citizens. But he explains the process is daunting.
He has to demonstrate that he’s taken steps to advertise the job opening domestically. In the past, Wiley explained, that included newspaper ads as far away as Florida and Texas. Then, he has to coordinate with the Ohio Department of Health and a handful of federal agencies to bring in foreign workers. He’ll have to provide those workers housing, food and transportation as well as $18.18 an hour.
“But the bottom line,” he said, “is that most farmers in the United States who use H-2A labor will not go through this. They utilize a foreign contractor.”
And Wiley argued that’s a problem. The H-2A program has faced allegations of human trafficking and recruiters demanding illegal kickbacks from workers seeking placement. On this side of the border, workers have made of claims of wage theft and poor living conditions.
“It’s because the process is so complicated and all of this that no farmer has the time to play the game,” Wiley said. “So you have this stuff come, and then you have people that criticize it, that there’s abuses and fraud because we’ve outsourced the process because of its complexity.”
“We had a bipartisan immigration bill that addressed all those concerns,” Logan offered, “that are now the subject of scary commercials that you see in constant rotation from the other side. And that legislation was killed because the current Republican candidate did not want a solution.”
Although he favors a different candidate, Bornhorst sees labor supply as a major issue and he draws the same link to immigration policy.
“It’s a worker shortage, and we’ve been grumping and moaning for 30 years, and we haven’t done a blooming thing yet that’s been instructive,” he argued.
“We need people to do those jobs, because we got a whole bunch of us living in this country that won’t do those jobs,” Bornhorst said. “We need to figure that out, because if we don’t find labor costs will go up more.”
And like Logan, he wasn’t happy with Trump’s push to scuttle an immigration bill earlier this year.
“I understand why he wants that to be one of his talking points,” he said. “I don’t think the plan was real great, but at least It was a start.”
Vibes and values
For all their concern with specific policy positions, however, there is a sense in which the decision of which party to support comes down to vibes. Knupp argued “we need to get back to our biblical principles that our Founding Fathers created this country on.” Biblical principles might sound like an allusion to abortion or trans issues, but Knupp made no mention of them. Pressed further, he brought up the ideals of limited government and low taxes as well as concern about the national debt.
Logan and Wiley, meanwhile, argued farmers have long memories, and once their mind is made up, it’s hard to change it. Thanks to his work propping up farmers in the 1930s, Wiley said, “my grandfather would say that that Jesus Christ himself couldn’t beat FDR.” But decades later in 1980, President Jimmy Carter — another Democrat and a farmer — lost significant ag support by imposing a grain embargo on the Soviet Union following its invasion of Afghanistan.
“There’s a number of farmers, the older ones, they’ll still talk about that embargo that Carter put on that they’ve never forgiven, and that’s when they dumped the Democrat Party,” Wiley explained.
To Gibbs, it’s a question of values. Leaning in close to the recorder, he insisted “particularly farmers, will always vote against their economic interest.” As an example, he pointed to Jim Jordan’s track record voting against the Farm Bill despite representing a largely rural district.
“They’ve been convinced that their values, their core values, whatever those are, are under attack,” Gibbs said. “So, Jim Jordan and others on the right will continue to inflame that and continue to tell people their values under attack.”
Gibbs explained only a few decades ago, half of Shelby County’s elected officials were Democrats. He contends Shelby County residents’ values didn’t change, but the perception of the Democratic party did.
“You’ve just been reframed,” he said of the Democratic party’s brand in rural communities, “and you didn’t do a good enough job to demonstrate the values.”
And as a result, he argued, Democratic administrations can approve policies to improve healthcare, childcare, or infrastructure, and still be met with skepticism. All those things are great, he said, but you need an answer “when that guy has got his finger in your chest at Walmart — ‘Why’re you Democrat?’”
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