Cyndi's Two Cents

Tariffs should not be used as weapons

Commentary.

I recently asked a friend if it was bad to wish to put 2019 in the rearview mirror without wishing away days in my life.  For those involved in production agriculture, 2019 is a year most of us would like to forget.  For some, 2019 will be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and forced a decision to radically change their farming operation, or in some cases, to leave the farm behind.

Few good farmers I know want to depend upon a government payment though the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to stay in business – let alone a third tranche of said payments. 

In a November letter to United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, House Ag Committee Chair, Colin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat wrote “The current program has created winners and losers among neighbors who find themselves facing the same market situations, meaning that some producers may remain viable while others may be forced out of business.”

I’m not placing judgement on anyone for participating in any government program.  I simply find it disappointing that a Market Facilitation Program payment – designed to assist farmers and ranchers with commodities directly impacted by unjustified foreign retaliatory tariffs, resulting in the loss of traditional export markets -has a reason to exist in the first place.

Commodities eligible to receive MFP payments are dairy, hogs, alfalfa hay, barley, canola, corn, crambe, dried beans, dry peas, extra-long staple cotton, flaxseed, lentils, long grain and medium grain rice, millet, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, rapeseed, rye, safflower, sesame seed, small and large chickpeas, sorghum, soybeans, sunflower seed, temperate japonica rice, triticale, upland cotton, and wheat.

When this program and these commodities was announced, I heard more than one cow-calf producer who had been losing money every day on his calves ask, “Where is my MFP payment?” 

The rally cry has been for a “level playing field” which will never truly exist.  Someone will always have an edge.  But wouldn’t it be great if that edge was because the product fit the specific needs of the buyer when the buyer wanted it and how they wanted it?  Of course, trade reform is needed, but trade and specifically tariffs should not be used as political weapons by any government. Tariffs are certainly not new to the United States of America.  Our congress passed a tariff act in 1789 that imposed a 5% flat rate tariff on all tariffs.

My hope and prayer for the new year is that those who govern can come to an agreement about what is “a fair and level playing field” and that it is in the best interest of the governed.  I want to see agriculture prosper in this country, but I would also very much like to see other industries succeed as well. 

Happy New Year!