A Lancaster County farmer holds out a handful of soybean pods for the camera on Sept. 3 at Moser Farm near Martell. Nebraska soybean farmers have few markets to turn to amid the fall harvest season after China, the top buyer of the state’s top export, took its business to South America in the face of the ongoing trade war. ARTHUR H. TRICKETT-WILE, Journal Star file photo
Reprinted from York News-Times
Written by Andrew Wegley Lincoln Journal Star
The fall harvest normally brings anywhere between two and five trains through the Farmers Cooperative in Plymouth, each one collecting 450,000 bushels of soybeans to be shipped overseas.
This year, things are different.
“We’ve got no bean trains,” said Tom Brandt, a row crop farmer and state lawmaker from the Jefferson County town. “None. Zero.”
That’s largely because China — the top buyer of Nebraska’s top export — has deserted the U.S. in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade war, buying its soybeans from South America instead.
Through June, Nebraska’s soybean exports were down 15%, according to a national trade group that attributed the decline “wholly” to a 52% drop in exports to China.
Things have only worsened since. The country that in 2023 bought $981.7 million worth of soybeans and soybean products from Nebraska producers is not set to buy a single bushel from Cornhusker State farmers this fall, according to farmers and trade groups.
China has instead bought its soybeans from South American markets like Argentina and Brazil, which offer a reprieve from the tit-for-tat tariffs the U.S. and Beijing have imposed on one another since Trump’s second term began.
Trump is, for now, taxing Chinese imports at 55%, while China is taxing U.S. imports at 32%. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports are set to snap back to 145% in November if officials from the two countries don’t agree to extend current rates before Nov. 10.
China’s pivot to South American markets has left the price of U.S. soybeans near a five-year low and Nebraska farmers — who are also facing rising input costs, in part thanks to tariffs — with “no place to go,” said Dean Thernes, the general manager of Farmers Pride Cooperative in Battle Creek, where, like in Plymouth, no bean trains are scheduled to pick up soybeans this fall.
“They are finding replacements for U.S. soybeans,” he said of China. “They don’t need us. And they’re trying to make a point that, ‘We’re fine without the United States. You guys figure it out on your own.’”
Armed with the best soybean yield in years thanks to Nebraska’s emergence from its recent drought, Thernes said producers are turning to domestic crush processors, which extract soybean meal and oil from soybeans.
But the domestic market isn’t big enough to make up for the loss of sales to China.
“We’re in a tough situation in that we have a lot of our soybeans (that) need to go somewhere,” said John Hansen, the longtime president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “We produce a lot more soybeans than we can utilize domestically.”
Farmers got an inkling of good news Thursday, when reports emerged from the White House that the Trump administration plans to roll out the first wave of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks.
But it’s unclear how much aid Trump can deliver without Congress, particularly while the federal government is hamstrung by a shutdown that began Wednesday with no end in sight.
For now, farmers are still waiting for the trade deals that Trump and Republicans promised would materialize when the president began initiating sweeping tariffs in March, fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to do so.
“What we’re doing isn’t working,” said Hansen, who added America’s farmers are facing the worst economic downturn since the 1980s.
“This wasn’t what it is that we signed up for, in the case of a lot of Trump voters,” he said. “We’re past the point where words — words don’t cash-flow. You can’t take any of the president’s words into your bank and use it in lieu of cash to pay off this last year’s operating loan. We need money.”
Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska told reporters this week that the “hard time in farm country” highlighted the need to approve the use of E15 fuel year-round in what would be a boon to state corn producers while Trump works to ink new trade deals.
“I can tell you that our farmers would prefer to have trade and have uses for their products, rather than receiving aid from the federal government,” he said.
In Ayr, an Adams County village where Lance Atwater has been working on his family’s corn and soybean farm since 2014, the second-generation producer was still holding onto hope Friday as Trump’s trade war upended Nebraska’s overseas markets amid harvest.
He called China’s desertion of Midwest producers like him worrisome but said it should also serve as an opportunity to find new markets around the globe while expanding the use of corn and soybean products in the U.S., curbing Nebraska’s reliance on foreign markets.
He said he hoped for good news soon on both fronts.
“It’s a challenging time for our farmers,” Atwater said. “But farmers always find a way to continue on.”
