A local Iowa farmer killed themself recently due to the current state of affairs. I emailed Chuck Grassley to let him know that his constituents have started committing suicide thanks to his choices and those of his admin, and that he has literally blood on his hands. It's not even bad out there for farmers yet, but it's about to be, and that fear has been enough for people to give up.

Mia Wong of Cool Zone Media has been screaming this from her own mountains of madness since at least April 2nd. This is going to cause cascading impacts across the economy

https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2025/1015/soybean-farmers-trump-bailout-china

Mr. Trump has angered many farmers by providing economic aid for Argentina, which almost immediately responded by suspending its export taxes on soybeans and other goods. That allowed China to buy a large lot of Argentina’s soybeans at a discount, further undercutting U.S. soybean farmers. Farmer sentiment – a measure of how farmers view their financial future – fell last month, reversing all the gains it had made since Mr. Trump’s election last year, according to the Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer Index.

When America’s soybean exports diminish, farmers in Brazil and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere expand their acreage and grow more soybeans for export, diminishing U.S. farmers’ market share. That’s what happened in Mr. Trump’s first trade war with China in 2018.

South American farmers are beginning to plant their soybean crop. If there’s no imminent sign of a U.S.-Chinese arrangement over soybeans, then they have more incentive to increase soybean acreage. That’s a long-term threat, Mr. Gerlt says, because once in cultivation, those acres don’t go away.

For the first time in 7 years? Hmmm, would that make it Biden or Obama's fault then?

But Trump is funding Argentinian soybeans

Genuine ask, it (feels like) more and more fields have been shifting to soybeans for more than a decade. Who else is a major importer that justified the swing from corn and feeder silage, before China got on board?

E:googled my questions- its a high protein alternative to meat, so it is popular in China, Mexico, and EU where mass meat farms are not on the same priority or scale as the US. Its also easily swapped into animal feed, and is a good energy yield crop that costs less soil-nutrients than most other high value crops as it produces much of its own Nitrogen to grow. In scale - In those 7 years China now imports about 20-25% of all US soybeans harvested accounting for over half of all soybeans exports. The US accounts for 30% of world soybean exports.

Most farms in the US are on 3 crop rotation and private farms often use a 5 year payback plan (for land and equipment). They JUST GOT DONE paying off the loans they took to get massively into Soy. They saw Trump promise farmers the world, took loans and grew Soy, got slapped with a recession, and just as they are recovering from poor sales, they get hit again. Given 1 in 5 farms are an export farm (the 20% statistic from earlier), and where they're at in crop rotation, I would make a (wildly uneducated) guess that 1 in 3 farms will experience extreme hardship. Either they have savings to just eat the second recession hit and will remove any edge on "getting ahead", or will need bailout, or will go broke. The other 2/3 are on a different rotation or are major corporate farms that will find a buyer within their own meat farms system to try and mitigate the massive excess.

And Argentina stepped in and sold their entire crop to China. All orchestrated by Trump.

Lo— uh-oh…

Nice.

We ought to stop funding South American countries then. Either start using the soy domestically, or start planing stuff that Americans eat. Maybe even focus on native plants that aren't patented and owned.