This month’s Farm Journal Ag Economists’ Monthly Monitor survey found that Fifty-three percent of agricultural economists, that were surveyed in July, believe that nearly all of the row crops side of agriculture is currently in a recession. They point out that Farmers and ranchers are used to dealing with uncertainty, but President Trump’s trade war is making their jobs a whole tougher, due to the rising cost of crop inputs, that includes fuel, fertilizer, equipment repairs and replacements, and other miscellaneous crop inputs, which are causing a cash flow drain for many ag producers. Another troubling factor is that agricultural markets have become quite volatile due to Trump imposing tariffs on almost all of our our trading partners, in a confusing mishmash of rates that seemingly have no rhyme nor reason.
While everyone in Congress is focusing on tariffs, wrangling over a new farm bill continues, though there are reports that Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is becoming less optimistic that a new farm bill will be completed this year, because the August recess is coming up. Then there are week-long breaks on the legislative calendar in both September and October. Also, senators will be focused on considering a variety of nominations, for federal judges, ambassadors, and various positions within the executive branch. So, maybe a farm bill will be considered in November? Well, the Senate will be gone the second week of the month to observe Veterans Day, then they will be out of the office for another week at the end of the month for Thanksgiving. How about December? Well, there is of course the ten day break for Christmas, so some Senate observers are betting that we won’t see a new Farm Bill until sometime in 2026, or maybe, even in 2027.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the plan to once again move more than half of the U.S. Department of Agriculture staff out of Washington DC to other locations in the country, to supposedly bring the agency’s workforce closer to the people it serves. But many observers contend that that's already the case. USDA has a long history of being a field-based department with employees stationed in hundreds of towns across the rural countryside, which places about 90% of the agency's almost 100,000 employees, in areas located outside of the Washington D.C. area. But one of the most troubling moves that Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins and company is making involves the dismantling of research resources. On the chopping block is the George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is one of the largest and most comprehensive agricultural research facilities in the world. There are hundreds of buildings on the more than 6,500 acres where a diverse range of research is conducted by world-renowned scientists that are studying crops, livestock, human nutrition and food safety, grain quality, environmental issues and much more. The proposal calls for the gradual closing of the center over several years and the continuing with research somewhere else. But such a move may dismantle much of this research, because some scientists may leave because they don’t want to relocate, and the interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines will be gone, and the long term field studies that are now being conducted at the Beltsville Center can't be picked up and moved elsewhere.
It seems that this plan is change simply for the sake of making a change.
