A6
NATION
East Oregonian
Friday, May 31, 2019
Soggy fi elds leave Midwestern farmers with few answers
By SCOTT McFETRIDGE
Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa —
Between the country’s trade
dispute with China and the
seemingly endless storms
that have drenched the cen-
tral U.S., Iowa farmer Robb
Ewoldt has had plenty of
time to think about whether
it’s too late to plant this sea-
son, how much federal aid
he might get if he does or
whether to skip it altogether
and opt for an insurance
payment.
Instead of driving his
tractor, he’s driving a truck
these days to earn a living
while wondering how long it
will be before he can return
to his fi elds.
“Sometimes I think,
what the heck am I doing
farming?” he said recently
by phone while returning
home after hauling a ship-
ment of dry ice to Chicago.
“When you owe the bank
money, you do some pretty
crazy stuff.”
Ewoldt is one of thou-
sands of Midwestern farm-
ers facing such decisions as
they endure a spring like no
other. It started with poor
corn and soybean prices fall-
ing even further as the U.S.
and China imposed new tar-
iffs, and was compounded
by torrential rain and fl ood-
ing that has made planting
impossible and killed off
crops that were just starting
to emerge.
Conscious that the trade
dispute was devastating
American farmers, Presi-
dent Donald Trump prom-
ised $16 billion in aid —
AP Photo/Nati Harnik
Jeff Jorgenson looks over a partially fl ooded fi eld he farms near Shenandoah, Iowa, on
Wednesday.
AP Photo/Nati Harnik
A fi eld is fl ooded by waters from the Missouri River, in Bel-
levue, Neb., on Wednesday. Thousands of Midwest farmers
are facing poor prices for corn and soybeans, fl ooding from
melting snow and torrential rains that made planting impos-
sible.
an increase over last year’s
$11 billion in aid — but the
promise has only added to
farmers’ confusion about
how to approach this strange
spring.
That’s because details
about how much money
farmers would receive won’t
be released until later, to
avoid infl uencing what crops
they decide to plant. While
there’s a rationale behind
keeping the aid details
secret, it adds another layer
of uncertainty for farmers
already guessing about the
weather, future crop prices
and how much they would
get in insurance payments if
they don’t plant a crop.
“It’s a take what you can
get and keep moving year,”
said Todd Hubbs, an agricul-
tural economist at the Uni-
versity of Illinois. “Depend-
ing on how the payments
and everything break out,
each farm is different.”
In the 18 states that
grow most of the nation’s
corn, only 58% of the crop
had been planted as of last
week — a far cry from the
90% that would ordinarily
be planted by that point. In
states that grow nearly all of
the soybeans, less than half
of the normal crop had been
planted. Farmers have even
taken to Twitter — creating
a #noplant19 hashtag — to
commiserate and share pho-
tos of their swamped fi elds.
For Jeff Jorgenson, it’s
an all-consuming question
of how much of his roughly
3,000 acres of southwest-
ern Iowa land he can prof-
itably farm. About a quar-
ter of it can’t be farmed due
to Missouri River fl ooding,
and much of his remaining
property has been inundated
with rain and water from the
neighboring Nishnabotna
River.
Navigating
muddy
roads in his pickup truck
this week, he tried to fi g-
ure out whether it would be
worth pumping water off his
land or whether that would
even be possible. Normally
it wouldn’t be worth the
effort, but with the prospect
that the Midwest’s misera-
ble weather will reduce the
nation’s fall harvest, corn
and soybean prices have
started to rise and plant-
ing every acre possible has
become more attractive than
settling for insurance that
would pay roughly half the
revenue of a normal crop.
Jorgenson, 44, said it’s
a puzzle trying to fi gure
out how much land should
remain unplanted and eli-
gible for insurance pay-
ments, how much should be
planted, how much money in
federal aid will be available
and whether those funding
sources will be enough to
cover his operating loan.
“Honestly, 24 hours a
day, this is all you can think
about,” he said.
Since Bob Worth started
farming in 1970, this is the
fi rst year he’s opted not to
plant on most of his 2,300
acres near the southwest-
ern Minnesota commu-
nity of Lake Benton. It was
a diffi cult choice, but one
Worth said he felt obligated
to make given the ducks that
are swimming where his
corn and soybeans should
be growing.
“I’m not going to try to
destroy my ground to get a
crop in,” he said, noting that
planting equipment would
rut and compact his land.
Despite insurance pay-
ments he will receive,
Worth, 66, said he’ll need
to refi nance loans and lose
some of the equity has built
up on land that has been in
his family for generations.
The deadline for not
planting and taking an
insurance payment without
a penalty varies depending
on the state and crop, but
the decision time has either
passed or is approaching.
Hubbs, the Illinois econ-
omist, said choosing to
opt out, especially when
prices are rising, is agoniz-
ing for farmers but may be
the right choice because of
the risk of a poor harvest
when planting late in soggy
ground and the possibil-
ity that the farmer won’t
be able to harvest the crop
before the weather turns
cold.
Trump hitting Mexico with 5% tariff in response to migrants
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a
surprise announcement that
could compromise a major
trade deal, President Donald
Trump announced Thursday
that he is slapping a 5% tar-
iff on all Mexican imports
to pressure the country to do
more to crack down on Cen-
tral American migrants try-
ing to cross the border.
He said the percent-
age will gradually increase
“until the Illegal Immigra-
tion problem is remedied.”
Trump
made
the
announcement by tweet
after telling reporters earlier
Thursday that he was plan-
ning “a major statement”
that would be his “biggest”
so far on the border.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump speaks during the 2019 United
States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony on Thursday
at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
“On June 10th, the United
States will impose a 5% Tar-
iff on all goods coming into
our Country from Mexico,
until such time as illegal
migrants coming through
Mexico, and into our Coun-
try, STOP. The Tariff will
gradually increase until the
Illegal Immigration problem
is remedied,” he wrote, “at
which time the Tariffs will
be removed.”
Trump has accused the
Mexican government of
failing to do enough to crack
down on Central American
migrants who have been
fl owing to the U.S. in search
of asylum from countries
including El Salvador, Hon-
duras and Guatemala.
The
announcement
comes as the administration
has been pushing to update
the North American Free
Trade Agreement.
The White House said
Trump would be using the
International
Emergency
Economic Powers Act to
implement the tariff.
Worship
COMMUNITY
“If the illegal migration
crisis is alleviated through
effective actions taken by
Mexico, to be determined in
our sole discretion and judg-
ment, the Tariffs will be
removed,” the White House
said in a statement.
But if Trump is not sat-
isfi ed, the 5% fi gure will
increase to 10% on July 1, to
15% on Aug. 1, to 20% on
Sept. 1 and to 25% on Oct. 1.
“Tariffs will perma-
nently remain at the 25 per-
cent level unless and until
Mexico substantially stops
the illegal infl ow of aliens
coming through its terri-
tory,” the statement read.
During a visit to Canada
on Thursday, Vice President
Mike Pence vowed the deal
would be passed this year.
Asked by reporters about
the new tariff, Pence said
that both Mexico and Con-
gress need to do more and
that Trump is determined to
use his authority to call on
them to do so.
Trump had said that he
was planning “a major state-
ment on the border” later
Thursday or Friday that
would be his “biggest state-
ment, so far, on the border.”
“This is a big-league
statement. But we are going
to do something very dra-
matic on the border, because
people are coming into our
country — the Democrats
will not give us laws,” he
said as he headed to a com-
mencement speech for 2019
United States Air Force
Academy graduates.
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