Reporting on U.S. Agriculture Policy

Catherine Bertini, emeritus professor of practice at Syracuse University, discusses how the United States’ trade war is affecting farmers and food supply across the country. The host of the webinar is Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR and former deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times. 

TRANSCRIPT

FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Local Journalists Webinar. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.

CFR is an independent, nonpartisan national membership organization, think tank, educator, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR generates policy-relevant ideas and analysis, convenes experts and policymakers, and is the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

This webinar is part of CFR’s Local Journalists Initiative, created to help you draw connections between the local issues you cover and the national and international dynamics. Our programming puts you in touch with CFR resources and expertise on international issues and provides a forum for sharing best practices.

We are delighted to have seventy journalists from thirty states and U.S. territories with us today. As was noted, this webinar is on the record. The video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact at CFR.org/localjournalists.

We are pleased to have Carla Anne Robbins and Catherine Bertini to talk about “Reporting on U.S. Agriculture Policy.” We’ve shared their bios, so I will just give you a few highlights.

Catherine Bertini is a professor emeritus of practice at Syracuse University, a recognized leader in international organization reform, humanitarian program management, and an expert in hunger, nutrition, and gender issues. She is a distinguished fellow of global food and agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where she continues to work on policy recommendations for improving the lives of rural girls. She also advises the Rockefeller Foundation on global food security issues and Gates Foundation. Additionally, Ms. Bertini was the first American to be appointed executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme and received the 2003 World Food Prize laureate for her transformative work.

Carla Anne Robbins is the host of this webinar series. She is a senior fellow at CFR. She also serves as faculty director of the Master of International Affairs Program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Previously, she was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal.

So thank you both for being with us for this conversation on “Reporting on U.S. Agriculture Policy.” Carla, I’m going to turn it over to you to have the conversation for the first twenty-five minutes or so, and then we’re going to open up to all of you for your questions, which you can either write in your chat or raise your hand. We prefer to have you raise your hand. And state your name and affiliation when we call on you.

So, with that, Carla, over to you.

ROBBINS: Thank you so much, Irina. And Catherine, if I may, thank you so much for joining us.

So we have such impeccable news judgment here at the Council. President Trump announced yesterday a $12 billion bailout for U.S. farmers—those who produce corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, wheat, and other row crops. How bad are things for U.S. farmers?

BERTINI: Oh, not good at all, and they’ve been through this before, and the president bailed them out in the first term. And so he’s doing this again.

The money—first of all, people are asking, where in the world is this money coming from? There is a—there’s a system at USDA, it’s called CCC—Commodity Credit Corporation—and Congress funds it. So this is not just some money pulled out—the administration pulled out of a hat; actually, the Congress in the Big Beautiful Bill replenished the funding in the CCC. And it is used by the secretary of agriculture to help out in emergencies for farmers, so this is deemed an emergency. That’s where the money’s coming from. But, yes, because farmers across the board are having a very tough time.

ROBBINS: So I saw a number from a senior research economist at North Dakota State that estimated that crop producers are going to lose between 35 billion (dollars) and 43 billion (dollars) on what they just harvested this fall. Does that number sound in the ballpark? I mean, and particularly when you compare it to $12 billion, the number seems pretty big.

BERTINI: Yes, 12 billion (dollars) is not going to fix the—fix the problem. And by the way, there’s hoops that people have to run through in order to get it—get it, and right before Christmas the administration will tell them kind of what they need to do even for that. But, yes, that’s a plausible number that you suggest or that the North Dakotan suggested.

But think about this from a farming perspective. If farmers planted their crops with their own—their own judgments of what kind of markets they had and what kind of opportunity they had, what the weather’s going to be like, and then all of a sudden, boom, markets got pulled out from under them, so what do they do? They have a lot of extra resources. Now, in the past sometimes those resources were selling abroad. In fact, the World Food Programme was created by wealthy countries who had farmer surplus. That was the whole rationale in 1961. And there was a lot of surplus that went overseas, and after a while a lot of the European countries stopped sending surplus but the U.S. did. So it could be an avenue, but the U.S. administration isn’t doing much overseas. They are sending some and some cash, but that could be an avenue for at least some. But it’s obviously not one that is explored and not fast enough for those crops not to spoil.

ROBBINS: So let’s, if we can, try to break down what the problem is. I mean, if they’re going to lose between 35 billion (dollars) and $43 billion, that’s a problem that is tariffs, or no demand for foreign aid, or? Is it mainly tariffs? Is it because of the China market. I know that because of the trade war the Chinese found cheaper soybeans in Brazil and in Argentina. Is that basically what the problem is for their exports?

BERTINI: Yeah. The export—

ROBBINS: This is all about exports?

BERTINI: It’s mostly about exports and tariffs; it’s not all about exports and tariffs. But let’s talk about them first. And soybeans are the—you know, the poster child here because they’re the ones that have most—been most dramatically impacted.

China used to buy—well, does buy about 60 percent of the world’s soybeans, and so the U.S. was selling about 60 percent of its soybean(s) to China. And when the last time—in the last Trump administration, when this—there were different ag policies, of course, yes, it—China went to Brazil, which has pretty active soybean market. By the way, the U.S. once upon a time helped them get off the ground. And so they replaced the American market. And it’s not all going to come back. It’s just—it just won’t. It hasn’t. And the U.S.—like, for instance, 2018-2019, $4.7 billion was being sold to China, soybeans, down from 12.8 (billion dollars) the year before. So it was a pretty significant cut.

So the U.S. has been working—the soybean industry’s been working to get back part of that market. They have part of it. But now the Chinese are retaliating again against this, so making it more difficult even for the soybeans. So, yes, it’s going to be a big loss. It can’t necessarily be made up.

The foreign aid was never as much as any of this, so that couldn’t totally make up for it. It just could be a help, for instance, to move some food. But as I said, not necessarily this market now just because of the time that it takes to get it moved.

So as it—as it relates to soybeans, that’s an issue. But other—I mean, other farmers are hurting from issues like immigration and the people they use. If you’re—if our listeners talk to any dairy farm—any dairy farmer, I suggest, they go visit in their—in their community and talk to them about what their biggest issues are. Even if they’re not exporters—and they may not be—there are going to be labor issues and there are going to be issues because they can’t get enough workers.

Now, I’ve talked to dairy farmers who say, you know, Americans—I try—I try to hire Americans first, and when the Americans come here they want to drive my trucks and my tractors. They want to work in my office. They don’t want to work up close with the—with the cows. It’s just not their thing. And I need people to hug the cows every day and be here every day.

ROBBINS: (Laughs.)

BERTINI: Yeah. I mean, really, you do, while you’re setting up the machines and everything. And he can only find Mexican and Guatemalan workers to do that. And are they legal? No, because the immigration policies that we have way before—it has nothing to do with this administration—can allow people to hire overseas workers for short-term assignments like when the vegetables are coming—are being ready to harvest. And you can hire somebody with a short-term visa to do that. But not year-round visas for these guys.

ROBBINS: Yeah. I saw this estimate, some numbers that seemed pretty extraordinary, although actually not extraordinary at all knowing what Americans want to do and don’t want to do, that about two-thirds of agricultural workers and crop and crop-related work are non-citizen immigrants, and nearly half lack work authorization.

BERTINI: Yeah.

ROBBINS: And the share of undocumented workers is significantly higher in specialty crops such as vegetables, greenhouses, fruit and nut operations. So the administration was going after these people. They’ve somewhat backed off on it. But the message has gotten out and people are frightened. It’s not surprising they weren’t sending their kids to school. You know, it’s a pretty scary thing.

So the administration came along and they have this proposed fix. They did a filing in October in the Federal Register. I want you to help me make sense of this. I haven’t been able. And I asked my husband because he briefly covered agriculture, and he doesn’t have an explanation for it. Their suggestion was that they want to make it easier and less expensive for farmers to hire foreign laborers through this guest worker program by lowering wages and allowing them to charge laborers for their housing. I’m not exactly sure how that attracts more workers.

BERTINI: No, I imagine it doesn’t. And why should they have to—why can’t they do what they want to do with their housing? I mean, a lot of these farmers, you know, bought up other farms, right? We have very—so many less, really, small, small family dairy farms anymore. So there’s a lot of big ones that have bought other farms, so they have lots of little farmhouses. That’s where they put these people. Isn’t that a good thing that they’ve—that they’ve found a way to house their workers? And, yeah, some of the workers bring families, and what’s wrong with that? But paying them less and—(laughs)—charging them more for housing is just not—it doesn’t even make any sense.

ROBBINS: Yeah. Just so—I’m thinking about people doing stories in their communities. There is this—I don’t—I don’t know enough about this, but it’s—I wonder whether this was a holdover lobbying campaign to change the guest worker program and the demands—the regulatory demands on farmers. I mean, I don’t understand this. I spent some time reading about it yesterday trying to understand why they think this is going to fix the labor problem. So if anybody out there, you know, who’s covering this can explain it to us, Catherine doesn’t understand it, I don’t understand it.

BERTINI: No.

ROBBINS: It’s an immigration puzzle. I do know that the United Farm Workers is suing over this policy, but it to me is a—it is a really fascinating thing.

So if we can go back a little bit more to the plight of farmers before I throw this open for questions, the tariffs, I gather, are also hurting farmers because they also have to worry about imports. They were in sort of an import problem even before the Trump tariffs because of the war in Ukraine, because it drove the price of fertilizer up because the Russians were big exporters of fertilizer, so things were expensive. They were also suffering from high interest rates. Can we talk a little bit about borrowing and how that fits into the life of a farmer?

BERTINI: Sure. Well, obviously, borrowing fits into any of our lives, right, for our mortgages or for buying a new car or anything else. So if you imagine that your livelihood depends on the rates that you get, or even the possibility that you have to have mortgages—there are some communities that may not be familiar with farmers, and farmers’ tactics, and farmers’ needs, and so forth. It’s hard to find a bank sometimes that will want to lend to agriculture interests. So it’s sometimes that, you know, you have to do a different kind of bank shopping even to find—to do it. But the insecurity of the possibility of funding and the cost of the funding is also, obviously, extremely significant.

But the—to your point about imports, imports are really important to us, especially for fruits and vegetables. They’re a substantial part of any market that we go to and any kind of food that we buy. And so the imports and what’s being limited because of the tariffs is a real serious problem for everybody, not just for farmers.

ROBBINS: Well, that’s certainly driving up—driving up food prices for all of us. But I think what I was talking about specifically for farmers is that—is that their suffering because—as part of this problem is that—is that they have to pay higher levies, you know, on the metal, like, for the cost of tractors or for farm buildings. And so they’re getting sort of buffeted not just on exports, but also on imports for their goods.

BERTINI: Sure. Well, I understand that both Caterpillar and John Deere, the two big American makers of farm equipment, have complained to the administration or raised to the administration their concerns because these tariffs and export policies and so forth are impacting them also, and they’re also asking for some financial relief from this as well.

ROBBINS: So, so far there’s no bailout for—in that way. But the—so this $12 billion bailout, so far as we can tell, is not even going to begin to cover the amount of it. And you said before Christmas they’re going to get the word about how they can apply for it. Can you talk a little bit about that process?

BERTINI: Yeah. Mmm hmm. Yeah. First of all, this—in the—in the One Big Beautiful Bill there was $65.6 billion for ten years of agriculture support—ten years. So, you know, we’re already spending now 12 (billion dollars) out of that for this.

So the farmers—now, I read this in Jerry Hagstrom’s report, and I would tell people if they really wanted to more—know more detail there’s a journalist in Washington that writes a thing called the Hagstrom Report. And so he wrote that the week of December 22 is when the administration’s going to give more details about how farmers apply or how they’re supposed to go about accessing this money, and then the money will be available by the end of February 2026. So that’s still quite a delay for guys that and women that owe money for various reasons and didn’t get to sell their crops, but that’s what’s happening.

ROBBINS: So we have a question from Diego Lopez. Diego, do you want to ask your question or should I read it?

(Pause.)

I can—I can read it. I’m a good reader. And I—

Q: Hey. I’m sorry.

ROBBINS: Oh, great.

Q: Thank you for unmuting me. Thank you for—(laughs)—

ROBBINS: Can you identify yourself?

Q: Yes. Diego Lopez with the Cibola Citizen here in New Mexico. Thank you very much for putting this on.

I was wondering, our state works really diligently to buy local produce. We have a rule that requires suppliers to identify when it—when the product is “New Mexico True,” or made domestically. So how is the release of this funding going to impact our local farmers? Are we going to see a decrease in local produce? And is there a dashboard where we can track this funding? Thank you very, very much.

BERTINI: Well, I hope—the government usually has ways to track the funding. I can’t tell you what that might be.

But the—according to the Big Beautiful Bill, the kind of crops that will have first dibs on the—11 billion (dollars) of the 12 billion (dollars) are barley, chickpeas, corn, cotton, lentils, oats, peanuts, sorghum, soybeans, wheat—I can’t read sort of my own writing—rapeseed, sunflower. So I don’t think your vegetables will be on that list, and they’re not usually for better or for worse. However, the billion—that’s supposed to be up to 11 billion (dollars) of the 12 (billion dollars). A billion (dollars) of the 12 (billion dollars) is supposed to be for specialty crops, which is where vegetables—fruits and vegetables, tree nuts might come in, and sugar.

ROBBINS: Diego, do you cover agriculture?

Q: Yes. Thank you very much for the answer. I do. I mostly track the impacts of drought. And you know, we don’t have a ton of local producers here, but what we do have is I think countywide the U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks, I think, 1,300 cows across our county—cattle, I mean. So—but we do. We try as much as we can to cover agriculture in the community. It’s mostly drought, though.

ROBBINS: Can you talk—are you seeing an impact of any of the problems that we’ve been talking about? Are farmers going out of business? Are farmers having problems with getting people to work on their farms? Is this—you know, are any of these problems particularly affecting them?

Q: I can’t say we’ve heard any issues about labor. I can’t say we’ve heard any issues about labor or anything about immigration impacting the staffing with our local farms and ranches. The biggest concern is water access.

ROBBINS: Which is—which is now, of course, going to become—this is an additional issue with tariffs on Mexico that the president has voiced. Catherine, can you talk a little bit about that?

BERTINI: Well, just reading in the paper this morning that he put additional tariff on Mexico because of a disagreement over water usage. That’s been going on for some time, but just a way that you try to get some movement on that. Diego probably knows, you know, the ins and outs of this being right on the border much better than we do. But that’s—that was what the paper said today.

ROBBINS: So in addition to questions, we would love to hear from any of you who are covering this issue in your communities about what your experiences are with farmers and either the challenges that they’re facing from tariffs or the challenges they’re facing from immigration issues, as well as any suggestions on sourcing for your colleagues about how they can—how they can track these issues in their own—their own communities. It seems to me like there’s some really great potential stories now that this money is going to go out, starting with this very issue that you were talking about from the Hagstrom Report, which is what are the challenges of applying for something like this. We all know how hard it is to deal with the bureaucracy.

I was reading, I think, in the Times this morning, which quoted someone—Richard Fordyce, an undersecretary at the Agriculture Department—which said, and this is attributed to the New York Times, which—OK, full disclosure, I used to work for them—but said that the most an individual person or legal entity could receive was $155,000, and that only producers with an adjusted gross income less than $900,000 would be eligible, which are similar to limits that apply to many other farm programs. So, you know, that’s a—you know, it’s—adjusted gross income less than $900,00 seems to still be a pretty big income for a farmer, but there was a lot of criticism of the last Trump bailout that a lot of the money went to really big producers, not to smaller producers, the ones that are most sensitive to—you know, to the vicissitudes, the changes of policy itself; as well that it wasn’t adequately targeted to the farmers that produced the crops that were most hit by tariffs, that it seemed to be—as we saw, including in the Biden administration, with a variety of bills that were meant to provide support during COVID, that the people who knew how to work the system the best were the ones who got the most money, and that’s not necessarily your average small farmer.

So, Catherine, if I were a local reporter and I wanted to track this, how would you suggest I go about it? I mean, there are some potentially really good stories there.

BERTINI: Sure. Well, there’s a—there’s still, although they’ve been cut back, agriculture offices in different counties. I think some have lost them, but they’re still either handled in the county or handled regionally. And so they would be—they would be the local source of or could find out the answers to which farmers in the county are applying and/or have received grants. These are USDA offices, yeah.

ROBBINS: So we have four questions. Great. And more to come, I’m sure.

So we have one from Frank Morris, who’s a national correspondent for KCUR in Kansas City NPR. So, Frank, can you be unmuted and ask your question?

Q: There we go. Yeah. Thanks.

I just wanted to clear up the issue about how lowering pay and charging guest workers for housing was sort of, like, part of an effort to bring more people in. That’s because it—the thinking is that it isn’t the pay or the—that prevents them; it’s the quotas under the H-2A visa system. It’s that, you know, restriction about year-round workers. So the thinking is that if you just—and the pay, according to some farmers—and it varies from state to state—the pay rate is based on a—you know, what the minimum wage is in the state plus, because they want to make it unattractive for farmers to hire foreign workers and make it—thereby making it more attractive for them to hire people—you know, domestic workers who, as has been noted, tend to not want to work under cows. But the—so the issue is—the idea is that they’re going to make it easier and cheaper to bring in more people, and then there are people that will come in even at these different wages.

But I was going to say the—I spoke with a farmer who said he’s paying the equivalent—this is a blueberry farmer in New Jersey—the equivalent of $31 an hour with the housing, also transportation requirements and the pay rate that’s set, again, to encourage farmers to hire locally.

ROBBINS: And do you think this is going to work?

Q: Well, I don’t know. I mean, it makes for interesting bedfellows when the farm unions are, you know, saying—suing, you know, and saying, well, you—they’re lowering these wage rates illegally, they can’t just do that, and pointing out that, you know, this isn’t an America first initiative if they’re trying to make it easier and cheaper to hire people from overseas. So—and there was a—you know, part of the administration, the secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, said earlier in the summer, look, we want a 100 percent American workforce in the farm sector, and we’ll just have, you know, able-bodied Medicaid recipients go out and, you know, work in the barn or what have you. So there’s—so you have a situation where you could have the farm labor unions in league in some way with the more anti-immigrant forces in the Trump administration. I think it’s going to be an interesting—but so I don’t know if it’s going to work. I know that people all over agriculture have been, you know, trying to get something and move the needle on a guest worker program for agriculture for a long time, and pretty much everybody agrees it doesn’t really work very effectively. So I think there is some—you know, some movement. And with the border—southern border being essentially shut down, you don’t—there’s sort of some wiggle room for immigration hardliners to kind of step forward and cooperate with changes a little bit. So it's very much in flux right now, I think.

BERTINI: Yeah. I would recommend that reporters talk to the farmers about, for instance, the Medicaid thing. Well, do you think you could find American farmers—American workers if you—if we paid a little more and we—and we recruited from the ranks of the people that get Medicaid? See what the farmers think about that.

Q: Oh, I think that’s a nonstarter. But—and I don’t think that that’s something that people in—who actually try to hire people for farm work would ever embrace. So, yeah, I—and that is no longer Secretary Rollins’ position. You know, she changed on that pretty dramatically around September and started saying, no, no, we need to make it easier and cheaper to import workers.

BERTINI: Yeah—

ROBBINS: Frank, before I let you go—just, I’m sorry, Catherine, I interrupted you.

BERTINI: No, no. My point is any sort of an effort to change—and I agree, the system is crazy. It’s a nonfunctional system. But any sort of effort to change it in favor of American workers has to have as a given that there are available and competent American women—workers to do the jobs.

ROBBINS: I just want to ask Frank one more question itself, which is: Are you seeing fewer immigration raids around agriculture workers?

Q: No, not a lot. There was—there were a couple, one kind of alarming one where ICE agents came in and raided a meatpacking—a small meatpacking operation in Omaha. And that—I think they kind of touched a hot stove with that. And there was a lot of pushback. And because if you were to take all the immigrants out of the meatpacking industry, you shut it down. And that would be a calamity for producers who have—you know, because there’s a pipeline. It’s not like you just get to, you know, process these cattle at a time of your choosing. There’s a pipeline. And if you shut down the system, it’s like, you know, shutting—you know, clogging up an escalator. The escalator keeps running. And, you know, in this case cows will be piling up on top of each other, becoming less and less valuable all the time. So that raid, it seems to me, was kind of a—I don’t know, maybe a wake up. We haven’t really seen anything like that since.

ROBBINS: Thank you.

So Tony Pilkington had a question. And I’m sorry, Tony, can you identify yourself?

Q: I’m Tony Pilkington with the Breckenridge Texan.

And we’re located in a rural area in North Texas. And I wonder if you guys could touch a little bit on the ranching and beef industry, because that’s an area that we’re heavily involved in. And I’m kind of trying to figure out where to go in on some of these stories, and where it’s kind of—we’ve got everything from small producers to big, giant ranches. So I’m just curious if you guys have some insight on what to be looking for in this particular area as far as local stories go.

BERTINI: Well, I’d say two. One is this—the issue of who’s working there, and under what authority. And the other are the export markets—because the bigger ones in particular, are going to be impacted by the export markets. And the differences between—for instance, you could look at the last few years. You could look at what their sales were in 2017 versus 2018, 2019, 2020, and then what it was like a few years after that. And now, you know, it may be too early to estimate for this year, but I’d look at the trends of export sales as another indicator, particularly for the bigger ones. Because beef cattle raising is really important. Beef exports, pork exports, although you may not have a lot of pig farms. But in any case, those are—those are big exports. Chicken.

ROBBINS: Tony, anything else?

So we’ll go on to Tammy Grubb, who’s from the Herald Sun?

Q: Hi, yes. Tammy Grubb, Herald Sun and News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thank you for holding this. It’s really been very interesting.

I had two questions, totally unrelated. One, I was wondering about the bailout and how much of that is related to helping farmers versus responding to the commodity trading markets, which I think have fallen this year. I’m not quite sure exactly where that stands now. The other is just wondering how the timeline for these grants could affect planning for the spring planting season, which starts here in about February and March.

BERTINI: Yeah. It’s hard to get in the mind of the White House exactly why they’re doing these things, but since they did this also in the last administration, and since farmers are really hurting and the commodity groups organizations themselves, as opposed to commodity markets, the groups have really been raising a lot of attention to this through Republican members of Congress, as well as through the White House. So my guess is it’s more direct to farmers, but that’s just a guess on my part. I mean, more instigated at the White House by their concern about the farmers.

Then I would say the timing, yes, the timing is critical, because what I just described before. If the payments don’t go out or start going out in February, until February, it’s going to be pretty difficult, in some cases, for farmers to decide what it is they’re going to plant. But on the other hand, the payments are just payments. Again, they’ve lost their markets, at least temporarily. So they’re going to have to—and no matter when those payments come in, and the payments probably needed for past due bills that they would have paid from the sales from their crop. So really, they have to make some sort of, in most cases, downsized decision about what it is they’re going to plant, and how much. And my guess is going to be based in part on what they were able to sell.

Q: So I would say that this sounds like it could be a continuing cycle, maybe even worsen before it gets better? Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

BERTINI: You’re talking to me?

Q: Yes. Yes.

BERTINI: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely a fair assessment. This is not going away anytime soon. I mean, the only couple of things that could change is if Congress says this is illegal, we can’t do—the president doesn’t have the authority to do tariffs. Who knows what that might be? The case—I understand that the paper The Hill reported that Costco and fifteen others have sued the government for unlawfully installing the tariffs. But that’s not going to be able—they can’t do anything with that until Congress does something about it, if they do.

Q: Thank you. I appreciate that.

ROBBINS: Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman, if you can identify yourself and ask your question.

Q: Hi. Hello. Can you hear me?

ROBBINS: Absolutely.

Q: Yeah, hi. My name is Marieke. I’m a Canadian American currently studying at Concordia University in Montreal and working for Le Devoir here.

Kind of a tangentially connected reporting stream, but I found myself somehow doing a few articles on the trucking industry. And one thing we’ve heard a lot from truckers in Canada is that they’re having a hard time making trips to the States because when they get there they have a hard time filling up their trucks to get back up to Canada. So I thought that was—like, it’s been really interesting to hear more about the agriculture industry and how that relates, because I’ve heard from them that they’ll go to the states and when they would wait usually a couple hours to fill up their trucks and go home, they now how to have to wait, like, a day or two to find enough things for it to be worth their while. So I thought that was super interesting.

BERTINI: I heard a—I heard a speech recently by Justin Trudeau, the immediate past prime minister. And he said, you know, it’s—beyond whatever the governments do about trade policy and tariffs and all that, Canadians are voting with their feet and their pocketbooks, personally. So American bourbon sales in Canada are way down. So those trucks are not going to take any bourbon back. And then I believe, I don’t know if there’s any reporters on from Kentucky, but I I’ve heard that that several distilleries have had to close. Don’t know if that’s true. But much less bourbon. Much less wine from California or elsewhere. The housing, especially in Florida and Arizona, is changing hands. Anecdotally I heard of a women’s—a summer women’s club in Florida that lost ninety of its members because the Canadians weren’t coming down anymore. So, yeah, Canadians aren’t wanting to buy lots of different American goods. And so it makes sense those trucks are having a hard time getting full to go back.

Q: Yeah. Anecdotally as well, I heard that this, the Sour Puss drink is opening a factory in Quebec so that they can start selling to Quebecers again, which I thought was very, very interesting. But I guess my question is a bit more, like, systemic, I suppose, about agriculture. I’m really interested in, like, food systems. And it’s part of what I study at university. And I’m curious what the missing link, I guess, is between farmers losing a ton of money and grocery prices going up like crazy, and kind of, like, if there would be a solution, a policy solution, that could realign those two things in some way.

ROBBINS: Good question.

BERTINI: Well, I can—yeah, I can see you’re going to have an exciting career, because you’re able to have a lot of these kind of questions. And you can solve some of them you’ll be—you’ll be a hero to many. I think the problem is that the things that—the prices are going up on things we can’t get as much in, like, for instance, the imports into the U.S. And not necessarily to what’s grown in the U.S., where the prices ought to be—ought to be considerably lower, or going in that direction, just because of the surplus we have because of surplus that can’t be sold.

ROBBINS: Hmm, can I ask a—I want to follow on that. That’s a really intriguing question to me, which is—which is you were talking about a very small amount of surplus before going to foreign aid. And we all, like, remember those pictures of, like, the big cheese blocks that they stock—that they stockpile. (Laughs.)

BERTINI: Yes, yes.

ROBBINS: So, the president is talking about—he sort of swings back and forth between talking about affordability is a con job and then talking about how prices have gone down. But when—if you look about the approval rating for this—approval ratings for this administration, one of the concerns is that food prices actually haven’t gone down, or the food prices are too high. Is there any way—you know, and in the past have the federal government purchased food from farmers to in some way make up the difference here? Not just as for SNAP or something like that, but also in some way to lower prices on the market, or make a difference there for general consumers? Or does that just go back and end up hurting farmers?

BERTINI: No, they do. They have done that in the past to help farmers. It just it takes a while to actually physically do it. But, yes, the cheese reference, which maybe some people online might only know from reading in the history books—

ROBBINS: Yeah, because they’re much younger than we are. (Laughter.)

BERTINI: Yeah. Yes. (Laughs.) But what happened was there was a glut on the dairy market, and the government bought up lots of cheese—lots of cheese. And when the Reagan administration was looking for ways to make cuts, they found, you know, miles of cheese in government warehouses. So they said, well, let’s give it away. So first they got criticized for giving away cheese, because people said—some people said it wasn’t good for you, why are you giving them cheese? But they gave it all over the place. And then there weren’t really so many food banks or systems that we have now for giveaways. So they were everywhere. There were churches and schools, you know, anybody could go get chunks of cheese. Well, I became assistant secretary of USDA under Bush forty-one. So I go in there and, you know, letters from the president that they don’t answer there, that they send down. I got mounds of letters to President Bush, where’s my cheese? There’s no cheese here anymore, because they had been successful getting rid of it.

Anyway, as I said before, on an international scale WFP used to have—

ROBBINS: World Food Programme.

BERTINI: The World Food Programme, yes, thank you. Used to have lots of surplus food from the U.S. And then there was a shift, really we should provide—we, collectively in the world, should buy more cash so that farmers in developing countries could grow their own food and we could buy it from them. So it was a big shift in that direction. But the U.S. still gives some—there’s a program called McGovern-Dole, which is a school feeding program. And that still gives in-kind food. And that certainly could be expanded. For instance, something like that, or the Food for Peace Program, which I know some Republican members of Congress tried to move to USDA once USAID was being eliminated. I don’t know, frankly, where that ended. But anyway, there are vehicles, is the point I’m trying to say, that could be used. We now have a great food banking system in the U.S. that could distribute. And we have those.

Now, also the one thing to know is that the government does buy, and I assume the administration still does buy—has the authority to buy certain crops that, for a year or two, grew much more than they expected and much more than their markets. So they do that with apples, prunes, I mean, a lot of different kind of perishable food items. And they send those around to, you know, food banks, senior centers, other places where take large amounts of food. So, anyway, yes. The vehicles exist, if somebody wanted to physically do that.

ROBBINS: Where’s my cheese? (Laughs.) But, I mean, that’s interesting—because also the other thing that soybean farmers have been saying for a long time, and I have no idea whether this environmentally makes any more sense than ethanol, which makes utterly no sense environmentally. There’s been a big—since the first Trump administration and the drop off in Chinese purchases of soybean—a big push from soybean farmers to have more mandates for the development of soybean-based fuels and as well as congressional mandates for the use of soybean-based fuels, the way that the—finally, you know, the corn farmers got their way on ethanol. Do you know anything about that?

BERTINI: Yes. That’s pre-tariff problems. I mean, they’ve been working on that for a while, yeah?

ROBBINS: Right.

BERTINI: So, that’s just a question, I think, of whether it’s politically palatable to do it. And it’s certainly not something that could be stood up very quick—fairly quickly in response to the current crisis for soybeans.

ROBBINS: Although they’re pushing it very hard right now.

BERTINI: Yeah, of course. Of course, yeah.

ROBBINS: The soybean farmers, yeah.

BERTINI: Well, look, this is their opportunity. Look at, you know, we’re bleeding, let’s—if nobody pays attention to them now they’re never going to pay attention later, when they’re more comfortable.

ROBBINS: Right.

Charlie Schlenker writes in—and, Charlie, do you want to speak your question, or should I read it? Well, I can read it. Oh, go ahead and read it. Thank you. Farm bankruptcies are up significantly, though still low in relative terms—800-plus last year. Are there projections for new—for the new year based on late winter aid payments or later?

BERTINI: I don’t know. I can’t answer that. No.

ROBBINS: And, Diego, you have another question? Do you want to speak it, or shall I read it?

So Diego asked, on Venezuelan beef, is that meat already on the market? And how can Americans tell the difference between USA beef and outside? I don’t know anything about this. Are we buying Venezuelan beef now?

BERTINI: Again, I’m going to have to say I don’t know. But I thought—I thought the beef had to be labeled, didn’t it, about where it’s from? I remember, there was a big push a long time ago for U.S. beef always to be—always to be labeled.

ROBBINS: I remember those—now I’m, like, really dating myself—beef, it’s what’s for dinner. Yeah, those really, really great ads, but.

BERTINI: Yeah. And so I don’t know the answer, but I think American beef has to be labeled.

ROBBINS: So other questions out there from you guys? I would love to hear a little bit more from people who are covering this about what they’re—what they’re hearing in their community, as well as any suggestions on sourcing. Catherine, you’re also a professor. For people who are covering this, what’s the best way in your community to find information? I mean, there’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What sort of—where do you find information about this if you want to track this in your community from sort of a vertical integration, from Washington down through your state, through your local community?

BERTINI: Yeah. I definitely go to the USDA office in my county or my region, or both. And also, every state, of course, has its own department of agriculture, and usually with regional offices. But whatever, they have some sort of outreach, every one of them. And so being connected to them. And they will, of course, have a specific background just about the state. Those would be the two data sources I would start with right away. I would go to the land-grant university in your state. And I know that the agriculture reporters know about this, but if somebody’s a community reporter and doesn’t you know, the land-grants were created by Abraham Lincoln in order to have some capacity in each state in—essentially, in agriculture. And they’ve expanded quite a lot into a lot of different areas in the state.

So they have a wealth of information. There’d be grad students there that’d be more than willing to be your best friend and help you find a lot of detailed sources. So I’d go to—I’d go to the land-grant, I’d go to the dean of agriculture at the land-grant and tell them you’re interested in kind of a relationship with somebody who’s going to be there, who can—or, a set of students who can help you, even if they recycle out once in a while. Because they would give you—I mean, they would be real eager to help you. And the government bureaucrats, of course, would give you the basic information. But I think you’d get a lot of twists and turns and nuances from grad students or professors at your land-grant.

ROBBINS: And who are the—I mean, who are sort of the strongest lobbying? I mean, there’s the American Farm Bureau Federation.

BERTINI: Yeah. Yes. And each commodity group. You know, we’ve been talking about soybeans. And there’s corn, and wheat, and all—I mean, everybody’s got a commodity group. And in states where they grow a lot of that commodity, they also have a state group. For instance, there’s an Illinois Corn Growers, right? And so I would find out from them, you know, who’s their public affairs person or their research person, and spend a lot of time with them. Because they’re the ones that are—they will really know the gory details of their crop, and what the government is doing, or not doing, to help them. And their market share, and everything else, yeah.

ROBBINS: I would also be talking to community bankers and local bankers, because they are so tightly involved. I mean, farmers live constantly on, you know, this banking margin, which is they constantly have to borrow, even the most successful farmers. That seems like a—

BERTINI: Yes. Yes. And I’d say, every once in a while go to a farm. I mean, you know, you don’t have to—if it’s not your regular beat you don’t have to do it all the time, but visit a farmer once in a while. He’d be flattered—he/she would be flattered if you went to see them. And whatever aspect you want to take on it. You know, go at Thanksgiving and do something about how whatever they’re producing is going to end up on your Thanksgiving table. Or go, you know, talk to them about their workforce, or whatever. I mean, you could find some other hook, but I’d definitely visit farmers once in a while because, you know, it’s going to be totally different than data, and PR, and policy. It’s going to be the real thing.

ROBBINS: Marilou Johanek has a question. And she’s a columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal.

Q: Can you hear me now?

ROBBINS: Absolutely.

Q: Oh, great. Yes, I am with the Cap Journal in Columbus, Ohio.

I just wanted to add one other source possibility for anyone listening. That the chapter—your chapter states chapter of the National Farmers Union, which really represents primarily family farmers, been really good source here in Ohio because I’ve been talking to a lot of those folks who are really struggling, as you say. And they look at corporate farmers and they say, these guys are doing fine. But we’re getting hit, like you were saying before about the imports and the exports, we’re getting hit on both sides. Plus we have a high interest rates.

And I’ve talked to a guy who, interestingly, used to be a Republican county chairman in one of the counties here, and is a fourth- or fifth-generation farmer who got so ticked off by the last bailout in the first Trump administration that he actually got out—he led his GOP party in the county—changed, left that position. Has gone to the Democrats in the state trying to do a listening tour through the state, saying it’s—this is just the same old thing over again. And farmers don’t want continual handouts, you know? And it’s—he is going around talking to farmers in rural communities because it is—that’s where you get the bottom line. And these people in the farming community, he said, you know, they’re going to be bought up by other people, but they’re the ones going under. They’re the ones where, you know, you’re losing your farms. The suicide rate is already way up, you know? So family farms—again, it’s National Farmers Union chapter in your state. If you haven’t, those are good sources.

ROBBINS: Did you write a column about this which we can share with everyone?

Q: Yeah.

ROBBINS: Great. Send it to us. That’d be great. Thank you, Marilou.

Q: OK.

BERTINI: That’s a great—that’s a great suggestion. And you remind me when you say that about something else, because I think it’s especially helpful for family farms. Somebody ought to look at, if they’re interested, in the school lunch rules. You know, school lunch is national, as you know, breakfast and lunch. But the rules, I think, are fairly antiquated. For instance, they have to buy the cheapest food. So if you’re in upstate New York, and the cheapest quote you get is from California for carrots, you can’t buy carrots from the local family farmer who’s growing carrots because it’s not cheaper than shipping them in from California. What’s wrong with this picture? And it seems to me that we could look at more toward—we could look more toward a prior—some sort of priority or status in the system of deciding what to buy where, local—on buying local.

ROBBINS: Tammy Grubb, last question. Do you want to—you want to speak it or should I read it? OK. If you have time for another question, could consumers see declining prices at prices at some point for crops, such as beef and soybeans, that are losing their export markets?

BERTINI: I would expect, yes. I would expect.

ROBBINS: So, well, I suppose—

BERTINI: But almost everybody’s losing their export markets for now.

ROBBINS: Yeah. Well—

BERTINI: Just one other point, if I could say, as we started talking about this, Carla, before. When you think about farmers, think about how there’s not a lot of stability in the life of a farmer. They have land, yes. They need, usually, loans. So they’re subject to the rates of the loans. They are totally subject to the weather and what’s going on, whether or whether or not it will be a successful year for them in terms of what they grow. They’re totally challenged by prices and what’s going to happen with their prices and customers. And so while they can run a stable operation, they have to constantly go with the flow about these different things that are totally out of their control.

Now, on top of that, they have to deal with whatever the exigencies are of the tariffs and the increase in cost and decrease in salability—or, the ability to sell overseas. So it’s a tough life for farmers. And yet, the people that are doing it love it and really dedicate their lives, their families dedicate their lives, to this work. So our finding ways in order to respect that and have other people—and write about it, so that other people know the love and the patience and the challenges that are put into being a farmer, to get food on our table at an affordable price, the better.

ROBBINS: Thank you. That was just a great sum up. Thank you all for wonderful questions. And send us what you’re writing about this. And I turn this back to Irina.

FASKIANOS: Yes. Thank you, Catherine Bertini and Carla Anne Robbins. We really appreciate it.

As Carla said, we will share out the video and transcript and circulate articles. As always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. And please share suggestions for future webinars. You can email [email protected].

Thank you all, again, for being with us. We wish you all a happy holiday season.

ROBBINS: Thanks, Irina. Thanks, Catherine. Thanks to everyone.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

ROBBINS: Bye.

BERTINI: Bye.