Agriculture and Farming

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U.S. Farmers Brace for New Trump Trade Wars Amid Tariff Threats

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Despite their concerns, some farm operators still support the former president and prefer his overall economic plan.To former President Donald J. Trump, “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.But to farmers in rural America, the blanket import duties that Mr. Trump wants to enact if elected are a nightmare that they would rather not live through again.As president, Mr. Trump imposed tariffs in 2018 and 2019 on $300 billion of Chinese imports, a punishment he wielded in order to get China to negotiate a trade deal with the United States. His action triggered a trade war between Washington and Beijing, with China slapping retaliatory tariffs on American products. It also shifted more of its soybean purchases to Brazil and Argentina, hurting U.S. soybean farmers who had long relied on the Chinese market.When Mr. Trump finally announced a limited trade deal in 2019, American farmers were frazzled and subsisting on subsidies that the Trump administration had handed out to keep them afloat.Now it could happen all over again.“The prospect of additional tariffs doesn’t sound good,” said Leslie Bowman, a corn and soybean farmer from Chambersburg, Pa. “The idea of tariffs is to protect U.S. industries, but for the agricultural industry, it’s going to hurt.”The support of farmers in swing states such as Pennsylvania could be pivotal in determining the outcome of Tuesday’s election. Mr. Trump remains popular in rural America, and voters such as Mr. Bowman say they are weighing a variety of factors as they consider whom to vote for.Mr. Trump has said that if he wins the election he will put tariffs as high as 50 percent on imports from around the world. Tariffs on Chinese imports could be even higher, and some foreign products would face levies upward of 200 percent. Economists have warned that such tariffs could reignite inflation, slow economic growth and harm the industries that Mr. Trump says he wants to help.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For Generations of Alaskans, a Livelihood Is Under Threat

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    Petersburg, Alaska, is as pretty a seaside town as any you’ll find across the filigree of fjords and foggy islands that make up the state’s maritime coast. Statuary and floral designs evidence its proud Scandinavian heritage, and bald eagles soar across the narrow strait that separates it from a national forest. It doesn’t have room for the giant cruise ships that disgorge thousands of passengers into Ketchikan and Juneau, but it is perfectly situated for its sustaining industry: fishing.Norwegian fishermen settled in Petersburg in the 1800s, finding it an ideal jumping off point to pursue salmon, crab and halibut. Hundreds of vessels now dock in there and sell their catch to the two major processors, which head and gut the fish before either canning or freezing it on its eventual path to the dinner table. One of the plants was built more than a century ago, and its owner is the town’s largest private employer.Few people know the business better than Glorianne Wollen, a fisherman’s daughter who operates a large crab boat in a partnership and also serves as harbor master, working from a tiny desk tucked into a bustling office with a little dog at her feet. A Petersburg native, she’s seen a lot of change.“In the good old days, the town was very alive with discussion, everybody was involved so everybody had a stake, everybody knew what was going on, things happened in real time,” Ms. Wollen recalled. That buzz receded as boats got bigger and more efficient, pursued more species and stayed on the water for more of the year to maximize their investment.“It takes two guys to do what 20 used to,” she said. “There’s just fewer of us.”Petersburg doesn’t have room for the giant cruise ships that dock in other Alaskan cities, but it is perfectly situated for its sustaining industry: fishing“There’s just fewer of us,” said Glorianne Wollen, a Petersburg native and fisherman’s daughter who now serves as the town’s harbor master.The Ranks of Alaska Fishermen Are ThinningAcross all fisheries, the number of people holding permits who harvest fish commercially each year has fallen precipitously since the 1980s.

    Source: Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, State of AlaskaBy The New York TimesSalmon Prices Have Been Mostly Flat for DecadesAdjusted for inflation, prices that fishermen are paid per pound of salmon they deliver to processors rose slightly in the 2010s and took a big hit in 2023.

    Source: Alaska Department of Fish and GameBy The New York Times More

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    Farm Workers Union Battles With California Grower, Wonderful Nurseries

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    Wonderful Nurseries, owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, has sued the state to overturn a labor organizing law championed by the United Farm Workers.The allegations ricocheted through the agricultural fields and into a Central Valley courthouse, where one of California’s most powerful companies and an iconic union were trading charges of deception and coercion in a fight over worker representation.Some farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries — part of the Wonderful Company, the conglomerate behind famous brands of pomegranate juice and pistachios, as well as Fiji Water — said they had been duped into signing cards to join a union. On the other side, the United Farm Workers, the union formed in the 1960s by labor figures including Cesar Chavez, contends that the influential company, owned by the Los Angeles billionaires and powerhouse Democratic donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick, is trying to thwart the will of workers through intimidation and coercion.For months, the back and forth has played out before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which arbitrates labor fights between workers and growers, and in a courthouse not far from Wonderful’s sprawling fields.In May, the company filed a legal challenge against the state that could overturn a 2022 law that made it easier for farmworkers to take part in unionization votes.After vetoing a previous version over procedural concerns, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure following public pressure from President Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker. The U.F.W. heralded the bill’s enactment as a critical victory, but several big growers said that it would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process.The law paved the way for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, a process known simply as card check. Its passage coincided with an era of greater mobilization to unionize workers during the pandemic and a willingness to press demands for better working conditions and respect from employers, said Victor Narro, project director and labor studies professor at the U.C.L.A. Labor Center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What a Prolonged Rail Shutdown in Canada Would Mean for Trade

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    Rail labor disruptions in Canada tend to be brief, but a prolonged stoppage could have hurt farmers, automakers and other businesses.Late Thursday, the Canadian government ordered arbitration between the railroads and the rail workers’ union, a move that will end the shutdown. Read the latest coverage here.Canada’s two main railroads shut down for several hours on Thursday after contract talks with a labor union failed to reach a deal, forcing businesses in North America to grapple with another big supply chain challenge after several years of disruptions.The sprawling networks of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City are crucial to Canada’s economy and an important conduit for exports to the United States, Mexico and other countries. Had it lasted, the stoppage would have forced companies to find other modes of transport, but for some types of cargo, like grains, there are no practical alternatives to railroads.Canadian National’s network extends into the United States, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City has operations in the United States and Mexico. The companies’ networks outside Canada are still operating because their American and Mexican workers are covered by different labor agreements.What would a shutdown mean?Canada has recent experience with rail labor disruptions. Strikes in 2015 and 2019 ended in days. The country’s federal government has the power to press the rail workers union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, and management to accept an arbitrated settlement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Will Billions More in New Aid Save Family Farms?

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    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has a line about the state of small-scale agriculture in America these days.It’s drawn from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which shows that as the average size of farms has risen, the nation had lost 544,000 of them since 1981. “That’s every farm today that exists in North Dakota and South Dakota, added to those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, added to those in Nebraska and Colorado, added to those in Oklahoma and Missouri,” Mr. Vilsack told a conference in Washington this spring. “Are we as a country OK with it?”Even though the United States continues to produce more food on fewer acres, Mr. Vilsack worries that the loss of small farmers has weakened rural economies, and he wants to stop the bleeding. Unlike his last turn in the same job, under former President Barack Obama, this time his department is able to spend billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives passed under three major laws since 2021 — including the biggest investment in conservation programs in U.S. history.The plan in a nutshell: Multiply and improve revenue streams to bolster farm balance sheets. Rather than just selling crops and livestock, farms of the future could also sell carbon credits, waste products and renewable energy.“Instead of the farm getting one check, they potentially could get four checks,” Mr. Vilsack said in an interview. He is also helping schools, hospitals and other institutions to buy food grown locally, and investors to build meatpacking plants and other processing facilities to free farmers from powerful middlemen.American Farms Are DisappearingAs agriculture consolidates, fewer operations grow more crops.

    Source: U.S. Department of AgricultureBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Bill to Limit Canada’s Trade Negotiators on Farm Goods Edges Nearer to Law

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    The measure from a member of the Bloc Québécois would ban changes to the supply management system for dairy, poultry and eggs.Private members’ bills, particularly those from members of the Bloc Québécois, rarely make their way through the parliamentary process. But after passing the House of Commons with strong support from members of all parties, a bill from Yves Perron, who speaks for the Bloc on farming, handily passed a second vote in the unelected Senate on Tuesday.Supply management brings stability, but at a price.Ian Austen/The New York TimesAnd perhaps even more surprising, it deals with a contentious issue: Canada’s supply management system, which controls production and sets minimum prices for dairy and poultry products as well as eggs.Many free-market economists and politicians cast supply management as a legalized price cartel that increases Canadians’ grocery bills. And in negotiations for every one of Canada’s major trade agreements in recent decades, the supply management system has emerged as one of the final sticking points.[Read from 2016: Safe for Now, Canadian Dairy Farmers Fret Over E.U. Trade Deal]If Mr. Perron’s bill makes it past the few remaining legislative hurdles and becomes law, it will bar Canada’s trade negotiators from offering any changes to supply management during future trade talks.Under the system, to avoid price-killing oversupply, farmers are assigned a production quota — effectively a license to produce milk, chicken, turkey or eggs — that they cannot exceed. Until recently, imports were effectively banned through eye-wateringly high import duties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    As Wildfires Grow Fiercer, Some Companies Look to Rebuild the Tree Supply Chain

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    As forests succumb to ever-fiercer wildfires, the federal government and some adventurous private companies are trying to resuscitate an industry.When it came to wildfires, 2021 was an increasingly common kind of year in Montana: Flames consumed 747,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Long Island.About 2,700 of those acres were on Don Harland’s Sheep Creek Ranch, where ever-drier summers have turned lodgepole pines into matchsticks ready to ignite. After the smoke cleared, Mr. Harland found creeks running black with soot and the ground hardening more with every day that passed.A former timber industry executive, Mr. Harland knew the forest wouldn’t grow back on its own. The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not like the rainy coastal Northwest, where trees grow thick and fast. Nor did he have the money to carry out a replanting operation, since growing for timber wouldn’t pay for itself; most of the nearby sawmills had shut down long ago anyway. The state government offered a few grants, but nothing on the scale needed to heal the scar.Then a local forester Mr. Harland knew suggested he get in touch with a new company out of Seattle, called Mast. After visiting to scope out the site, Mast’s staff proposed to replant the whole acreage, free, and even pay Mr. Harland a bit at the end. Mast, in turn, was to earn money from companies that wanted to offset their carbon emissions and would put millions of dollars into planting trees that otherwise wouldn’t exist.Mr. Harland said he had his doubts about the carbon-selling part of the plan, but he was impressed with Mast’s operations, so he said yes.Two years later, after seeds had been collected from similar trees on nearby lands, crews of planters came out with bags full of seedlings, rapidly plunking them into the ashen ground. As part of the deal, Mr. Harland signed an agreement to let the trees grow for at least 100 years, so they can keep sucking greenhouse gases out of the air as they mature.Can carbon credits help rebuild a forest? Tell us what you think. More

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    They Grow Your Berries and Peaches, but Often Lack One Item: Insurance

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    Farmers of fruits and vegetables say coverage has become unavailable or unaffordable as drought and floods increasingly threaten their crops.Farmers who grow fresh fruits and vegetables are often finding crop insurance prohibitively expensive — or even unavailable — as climate change escalates the likelihood of drought and floods capable of decimating harvests.Their predicament has left some small farmers questioning their future on the land.Efforts to increase the availability and affordability of crop insurance are being considered in Congress as part of the next farm bill, but divisions between the interests of big and small farmers loom over the debate.The threat to farms from climate change is not hypothetical. A 2021 study from researchers at Stanford University found that rising temperatures were responsible for 19 percent of the $27 billion in crop insurance payouts from 1991 to 2017 and concluded that additional warming substantially increases the likelihood of future crop losses.About 85 percent of the nation’s commodity crops — which include row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat — are insured, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a nonprofit promoting environmentally friendly food production.In contrast, barely half the land devoted to specialty crops — supermarket staples like strawberries, apples, asparagus and peaches — was insured in 2022, federal statistics show.Among those going without insurance is Bernie Smiarowski, who farms potatoes on 700 acres in western Massachusetts, along with 12 acres for strawberries. His soil is considered some of the nation’s most fertile. The trade-off is the proximity to the Connecticut River, a bargain that grows more tenuous as a warming world heightens the likelihood of flooding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can Europe Save Forests Without Killing Jobs in Malaysia?

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    The European Union’s upcoming ban on imports linked to deforestation has been hailed as a “gold standard” in climate policy: a meaningful step to protect the world’s forests, which help remove planet-killing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.The law requires traders to trace the origins of a head-spinning variety of products — beef and books, chocolate and charcoal, lipstick and leather. To the European Union, the mandate, set to take effect next year, is a testament to the bloc’s role as a global leader on climate change.The policy, though, has gotten caught in fierce crosscurrents about how to navigate the economic and political trade-offs demanded by climate change in a world where power is shifting and international institutions are fracturing.Developing countries have expressed outrage — with Malaysia and Indonesia among the most vocal. Together, the two nations supply 85 percent of the world’s palm oil, one of seven critical commodities covered by the European Union’s ban. And they maintain that the law puts their economies at risk.In their eyes, rich, technologically advanced countries — and former colonial powers — are yet again dictating terms and changing the rules of trade when it suits them. “Regulatory imperialism,” Indonesia’s economic minister declared.The view fits with complaints from developing countries that the reigning international order neglects their concerns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More