Administration's Trade War Already Dampening Farm Forecast for 2019 Growing Season
Press Release
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today released the following statement on new reports that the administration's trade war is already dampening prospects for North Dakota farmers in 2019, as commodity prices slump and access to the critical Chinese market for important crops like soybeans has been essentially cut off.
According to an article from Politico this morning, "The Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service has estimated that 2018 net farm income will be $9.8 billion, or 13 percent, lower than the year before. Adjusting for inflation, farm income is barely above the lowest level since 2002. If current trends continue, some agriculture economists predict that farm income will fall again in 2019."
"There's no such thing as short term pain for farmers in a trade war, and new predictions for 2019 are very worrying for our ag economy and the communities that depend on this vital industry," Heitkamp said. "North Dakota farmers spent decades building a market for soybeans in China, and they're seeing it evaporate before their eyes because of the administration's shortsighted trade policies. We can't be silent in the face of this self-inflicted wound to North Dakota's largest industries, and I'll keep fighting smart trade policies that protect workers and expand markets for the goods we proudly grow and produce for the world."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently predicted that the pullback in U.S. soybean sales to China "appears likely to continue well into 2018/19" as China shifts its purchases to U.S. competitors like Brazil. North Dakota had been exporting nearly 70 percent of its soybeans to Asia, primarily China, but "U.S. growers have effectively been shut out of the world's largest soy market in China since those retaliatory tariffs went into effect in July," according to a recent report in Politico.
According to a North Dakota State University professor's analysis recently reported in Agweek, without the trade war with China, soybean prices would be near $13 instead of the current price around $8 a bushel.
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