President Donald Trump promised farmers at the start of this year that historic trade deals would deliver huge gains to them, but just five months later some grocery store shelves sit empty as farmers are forced to euthanize livestock and throw away produce.
The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the $2 trillion food industry and destroyed supply chains, and farmers find themselves far worse off than they had expected when Trump promised the best days are "yet to come," reported the Washington Post.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it," said 43-year-old dairy farmer Scott Glezen, of Lisle, New York, "and I’ve seen some very bad times."
China had agreed to double its purchases of U.S. farm goods, and Trump also boasted of a provision in the new North American trade agreement requiring Canada to open its dairy market, which was expected to deliver a $300 million gain to American farmers.
Glezen, a seventh-generation dairy farmer, has hoped to turn a profit for the first time in four years, but the pandemic cut milk costs, wiped out much of the demand for dairy and disrupted transportation and processing.
The Missouri-based marketing firm that distributes Glezen and other farmers to start dumping their milk in March, and he dumps half or all of his cows' milk on many days.
“It’s something you can barely stand to watch,” he said. “When we see that product going down the drain, it’s painful to us.”
Trump has secured $28 billion to help farmers -- who were a key voting bloc in his 2016 win -- during his tariff war, and Congress provided an additional $19 billion last month in coronavirus relief. Another $14 billion will become available in July -- but farmers say all that help is "completely inadequate."
“If Congress does nothing more than what they’ve done to this point we will have a very bad crisis in agriculture that will be equal to the 1980s,” said 55-year-old Scott Blubaugh, a cattle rancher and crop farmer in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. “We’re going to see a mass exodus of farmers and ranchers if they don’t do something. We don’t want a government check, but this may be the only way to keep some of these people going another year.”
The stress is eating some farmers alive, said Blubaugh, who recalled a recent conversation with one distraught farmer while volunteering for a Farmer's Union suicide hotline.
“He had the gun loaded, and his wife called Farm Aid,” he said. “He was crying and just saying, ‘I just want out of this.’”
