Scott Brown, a soybean farmer in Arkansas (Photo: screen capture)
Scott Brown grows soybeans in Arkansas and has sounded the alarm for months about costs incurred by President Donald Trump's administration, which have affected him and others.
Instead of the "America First" policies promised by Trump in 2024, Brown said he woke up to see the United States was sending $20 billion to bail out Argentina, which is in direct competition with U.S. soybean farmers.
"And then the Chinese buy, I think the figure is 30 or 40 container ships, which is about 65,000 metric tons per ship, which is like 2.2 million bushels. So, they buy $12 or $14 billion worth of soybeans from the Argentines after the tax holiday. And here's the caveat to it. They give $2.30 over the November board. While I'm getting $0.50 under the November board. So that makes the Argentine soybeans about $12.42 a bushel. So all my premiums went to Argentina!" said Brown.
He noted that Agraculture Secretary Brook Rollins is promising that relief is "around the corner," but Brown said that he can't even get anyone on the phone at the Commodity Credit Corporation.
"We were going to plant canola this month. It's one of the few things we found. It has moved into Arkansas. They're going to make renewable jet fuel, renewable diesel out of it. We've never raised any. I had to get a loan from an FSA to do it, because it's an uninsurable crop through the federal crop insurance, but they would let me do it through the NAP insurance," he explained. "Well, I can't even get the loan for it because there's nobody at the FSA office. There's nobody at the [Natural Resources Conservation Service] office."
He went on to say that in the few weeks since he last spoke to host Katy Tur, he's lost 15% of his market share, losing about $12 an acre. He isn't sure if he'll break even this year.
"Everybody's pretty nervous. Everybody's pretty scared," he said about his fellow farmers, many of whom supported Trump. "Everybody's scared to death. ... They're gonna sell people out."
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