After Wisconsin farmers lost billions of dollars during Donald Trump's trade war with China, the president has given farms record amounts of subsidies. But will his efforts be enough to sway rural voters on election day?
Since 2018, the start of the trade war with China, Wisconsin farmers have faced the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, and dealt with rapidly dropping exports due to the high tariffs that China placed on American agriculture exports. The president has given over 46 billion dollars in subsidies to debt ridden farmers this year, increasing those payments in the lead up to election day. Despite Donald Trump’s efforts to garner the support of rural Wisconsin voters, many farmers are considering a vote for Joe Biden, who has a more concrete plan to help American farms.
“I like that Trump is at least trying to push a deal with China through. I’ve heard a lot of people say they’re fed up with the fact that there hasn’t been a deal yet, and I don’t know if I have a whole lot of confidence that there will be a deal if he gets reelected” says Hayden Flannery, a farmer whose family owns over 100 acres of farmland in Lafayette county and has received over one hundred thousand dollars in government subsidies since 2018.
Wisconsin farmers have been uniquely hurt by the tariffs that China has placed on corn, soybeans and other agricultural products. Robert Kudrle, an international trade professor at the University of Minnesota explains that the tariffs have been so damaging to exports because China is able to purchase their goods from other countries who have much lower import costs, “whenever a buyer can easily substitute something cheaper for your product, your market goes down”, Kudrle says.
Local Wisconsin farmers are feeling the impact of the drop in crop sales, with individual farm debt on the rise, subsidies are hardly more than a bandaid placed over the millions of dollars hemorrhaging from Wisconsin farms every year. “I think the confidence that we had in Donald Trump to make a good deal for us with China is definitely shrinking”, Hayden says, “I’m glad we got some more subsidies and funding this summer during the pandemic, but if we can’t export our corn next year it’s going to be hard for a lot of farms to stay afloat”.
Even though many Wisconsin farmers have lost faith in Donald Trump’s trade war, Biden may struggle trying to win over rural voters in areas like Lafayette county, a reliably conservative area where over 60% of voters voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has made it clear that if elected he will “pursue a trade policy that works for farmers, support beginning and small farmers, foster the development of regional food systems, and promote biofuels”, a plan that some farmers think is more practical and sustainable than providing billions in subsidies until a trade deal is reached.
Joe Biden's support for small farms may also give him an edge in rural Wisconsin, where an estimated 96% of farms are owned by one or two producers, according to the 2018 agriculture census.
Furthermore agriculture subsidies may actually be harming small farms, according to The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition who argue that “federal subsidies to farms are increasingly going to larger and larger farms, thus supporting the cycle of the big getting bigger. Fewer and bigger farms mean less money circulating in local economies, fewer farm jobs in rural areas, and fewer opportunities for beginning and young farmers to get into the business”.
Hayden Flannery says that he doesn't know who he’s going to vote for yet, but that the candidates agricultural plans will definitely be one of his deciding factors, “I watch a lot of videos on Facebook that make it seem like Trump is really trying to help us, but I haven’t seen much about Biden yet so I don’t really know what he plans on doing”, Hayden says.
While the spotlight on Wisconsin, a notorious swing state, seems unlikely to fade in the lead up to election day, the issue of agriculture in rural counties will prove to be a contentious issue that may have the potential to sway the election one way or another.
“I don’t know how many people Joe’s going to win over, but we all see the amount of farms that have gone bankrupt in the past few years and when I’m hauling corn to Monroe I sure see a lot more Biden signs than I used to”, says Hayden.
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