LEMON DROP | Farmers Are Turning on Trump & MAGA!
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How are farmers across the Midwest describing the immediate impacts of tariffs and the government shutdown?
I want to discuss today with this fine panel that I have here how farmers are being affected by, not only by the Trump tariffs, but also by the government shutdown. And they are really hurting right now. Joining me now is Will Westmoreland. He is a Missouri agroforestry farmer, a political consultant, and a good friend of this show. Today, he has brought me a panel of farmers to speak about how Trump's economic policies have affected them. Nick Lewandowski is here, Kansas farmer. James Bowden is a Kansas beef producer. Ann Schragel is a Minnesota row crop farmer. And Frank Barnets is a Missouri beef producer. How did I do on the names? Perfect, pretty good. I did okay. Thank you so much for joining. We've been hearing a lot.
We're going through a lot, all Americans are. Folks are about to lose some of their government benefits and they're gonna find out. Open enrollment is happening soon. So I'm gonna start with you, Anne. What's going on? How are farmers feeling about the state of this administration, the state of the country, tariffs and the government shutdown.
Yeah, our Department of Agriculture yesterday hosted a roundtable with all the ag groups about farm stress and what we're hearing in Minnesota about this. And the phrase came up over and over again about uncertainty fatigue. Farmers are facing uncertainty in all sorts of places, whether it be our markets due to the self-imposed, self-inflicted trade war that we're experiencing. whether it be from the government shutdown, whether or not we'll ever receive payments that are congressionally mandated through our farm bill, whether we'll see a farm bill again if Congress has fully decided to abdicate its role. You know, and, like, the loss of a social safety net, that does benefit farmers, right? Snap dollars benefit farmers.
Farmers disproportionately buy health insurance on the private market, and we're seeing our health insurance rates go up because the insurance companies don't know whether or not there will be tax credits for that. I mean... It's everything there is uncertainty. We're used to uncertainty because we know that we can't control the weather, right, as producers. But this seems like there are some really self-imposed policies that are making that uncertainty even higher.
Well, let's talk about that, Will, because Anne says self-imposed policies. And I want to talk about just how many people this affects. America's farming, dependent counties, what that means is dependent counties defined by USDA as counties where 25% or more of average annual earnings were derived from farming overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump. They helped to elect Donald Trump in 2024 by an average of 77.7%. What has happened now, Will?
Well, so if I take off my farmer hat and I put on my political consultant hat, we've seen about a 9% degradation in Trump's support in rural America. So since he came into office, since the inauguration, we've seen about a 9% drop in the number of people that still support him. If you look at the primary issues that are driving that, obviously ag policy is one of those, but believe it or not, foreign policy has had a big impact on that as well. He saw a big drop. when he did what he did to the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, in the Oval Office. There was a huge backlash from rural America, especially farmers and ranchers on that. So this 9% drop, I think, is hopeful because we're seeing farmers react directly to these bad policies in the administration.
And it's across the board. To Anne's point, know we've got this beef dump happening from argentina and now it sounds like we're going to get the same dump from brazil frank and james can speak to this in a little bit more detail but what that's causing to happen is futures are dropping and the prices that are set at the sale barn are driven by what the packers are going to be able to purchase that beef for and sell it to the grocery stores at later on down the road so even though herd sizes aren't getting bigger And nothing's really changed in regard to demand.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How are farmers across the Midwest describing the immediate impacts of tariffs and the government shutdown?
0:13–5:44
2
Which farmer voices and regions are represented on the panel and why does that matter?
5:44–7:46
3
What do farmers mean by 'uncertainty fatigue' and how are markets and policy driving it?
7:46–13:20
4
How has rural support for Trump shifted and what data explain that change?
13:20–20:54
5
How are tariffs, foreign competition and packer consolidation affecting cattle and beef prices?
20:54–50:04