John Boyd Jr. knows he cannot control the sun or the rain. A lifetime of farming in southern Virginia means he has seen good years and bad years, healthy crops and high prices, lower yields and a shortage of buyers. But he says actions by the month-old Trump administration have hit his industry with a new level of concern.
“The president casts a net of uncertainty every time he makes one of these wild announcements … tariffs to China, tariffs to Mexico, tariffs to Canada. USAID – it’s over, it’s done. Every time he makes those type of drastic announcements, he affects America’s farmers,” Boyd told CNN.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing all funding promised under the Inflation Reduction Act, including $3.1 billion in loan relief for farmers and $19.5 billion to support Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation programs. Tariffs on imports from Mexico and China that could provoke reciprocal action are still on the table and the gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has sent shockwaves through countries receiving food assistance, agency workers and not least the American farmers growing the food.
The change has been fast and furious, and Boyd says he and other farmers don’t have the time to wait for things to settle down.
It’s days away from planting season on his 1,000-acre farm near the border with North Carolina but without knowing the demand for crops and whether safety-net loans will again come from the USDA, Boyd says he does not have the answers banks need to give him the money to buy seed.
“We grow good soybeans, we grow good corn, we grow good wheat – that’s not the problem,” he said. “The problem is the politics that they’re playing with the commodity and they’re playing with the lives of farmers.”
Boyd, the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, is no fan of Trump. But there is disquiet, too, among fans of the president halfway across the country in Kansas.
On a whiteboard at the Pawnee County Cooperative Association, Kim Barnes tracks the price of commodities. Wheat, milo, corn and beans all have a red arrow next to them showing price drops per bushel.
Barnes’ group can move a million bushels of crops in and out of the massive grain elevators each week, but right now there is very little movement.
Over the past 10 years he says he’s become used to the USDA, Food for Peace and other programs putting out contracts saying how much grain they are looking for, and what the price is.
“I was hoping for another one here right away, because there’s no other market. I was hoping we’d do another one so that we could move more milo into the system,” he said.
His elevators are full of milo – also known as sorghum – and if it’s not sold and there’s a bumper crop of wheat coming in this summer, the co-op may have to get creative with its storage, Barnes says.
“We haven’t had any trouble moving milo up to this year,” he said. And while farmers love to feed people, Barnes says he is looking at selling milo for pet food or ethanol production.
He hears the same concerns from Kansas farmers as those from Boyd.
“It’s time to renew their seasonal lines with the banks, and their balance sheets have been affected, and some people are having a hard time renewing. They weren’t able to pay off last year’s seasonal line, and now we’re getting ready to go into another season.”
Barnes, however, says he remains optimistic.
“We’ve been down this road. In the last 50 years, I’ve seen highs, I’ve seen lows,” he said. Pointing to some new storage facilities, he added: “Our new expansions that we’ve done is being optimistic that we’re going to have another crop, and we want to be the one that takes care of it.”
He welcomes legislation proposed by Kansas’ two US senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall, along with Rep. Tracey Mann, also from Kansas, and Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota to move the Food for Peace program from USAID administration to the USDA.
Barnes said he was confident that the program, with its help for farmers and humanitarian aid, would go on. “We don’t want to see anybody go hungry, whether it’s here locally or globally.”
Trump’s agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has held meetings with farmers since her Senate confirmation and has heard their concerns.
On February 20 she announced that about $20 million of the money frozen by Trump on January 20 would be released to honor contracts already made directly to farmers.
In an interview with Farm Journal, Rollins acknowledged the money has “got to move quickly.”
“We’re a little bit Band-Aiding and duct-taping and bubble-gumming this thing together, but please know … this is of the highest priority,” she said.
Rollins said the first call she got after her Senate approval was from Trump. “He said, ‘Please let the farmers and the ranchers know that we are going to do everything we can to make them prosperous again,’” she told a summit in Kansas City, Missouri, earlier this month. “And I said, ‘Sir, we will absolutely do that.’”
That message rings hollow for Boyd, who says he’s holding off the work he normally does on his machinery ahead of planting because of all the upheaval.
“This President ain’t going to take away my gift of farming and my skill set of farming. I ain’t giving up, so I’m going to die trying. And that’s the message I have for this President. Are they helping me? No? Are they making it more difficult for me? Yes. Shame on this administration for not putting America’s farmers first.”
