Amy Scott

With Congress expected to take up work on a new farm bill this year after years of delays, we thought we'd check back in with Vance and Louise Emke of Emke Seed in Healy, Kansas.

Good to talk with you again.

Great to be here.

When we met, it was, I guess, early fall, maybe late summer.

How did the year turn out for you?

And we had such a great, great crop locally.

I mean, within our region and our county, there's no place to store some of that.

So it's sitting on a ground in a million bushel piles.

China usually buys...

Most of it or all of it.

And it's just sitting here and China has not shown up.

Yeah.

And that's because of the trade war that's been going on.

When we last talked, China basically wasn't buying soybeans, milo or grain sorghum.

But I thought they had resumed those purchases.

Has that not shown up yet in your market?

So last month, the Trump administration announced $12 billion in aid for farmers who have been dealing with these trade disruptions and the higher costs due to tariffs.

What do you make of that program?

Well, what's your outlook for the year ahead?

And the rest of the story is that the things that we purchased, like our steel and intercutter blades, those prices went up.