Bankers, corn and soybean glut driving farmers off the land as drought grips upper MO basin

Republicans aren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the current agriculture recession makes the Biden/Harris administration look bad. 

Matt Bruner supported Ted Cruz when he was a South Dakota delegate to the 2016 Republican convention. Bruner farms near Carthage where he has taken some $3500 in federal subsidies, supports candidates in the far white wing and even Republican former legislator, Steve Hickey called him a racist. When pressed by an interested party on Faceberg recently Bruner said he doesn't care whether a farm bill is passed after he posted a picture of rotten corn saying, "but it's not actually black. Thus, it's Kamala corn."

Farmers are taking out loans at a rate and scale not seen in years as weakened crop prices weigh on the agricultural sector, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Farmers are grappling with weakened global demand and a glut of corn and soybeans, which has contributed to a decline in the prices paid to producers. [Farm Loans Soar as Ag Economy Deteriorates]

Especially without a farm bill economists like Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm about the Trump tariffs. According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Trump is elected. 60% of Americans think the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse. 

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Spring wildfire seasons begin in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains.

Going back to 1950, 66% of all U.S. farms — 3.75 million farms in total — have stopped producing. The number of acres farmed has dropped by 323 million, which is roughly double the size of Texas. Agriculture experts worry as family farms across America gasp to stay afloat and go broke. [American Family Farms Going Broke]

In February two tracts of farmland in Iowa sold for nearly $30,000 an acre and in March some farmland in that state sold for $26,000 an acre. Today, land is selling for $17,000 and $20,000 per acre but there were also fourteen "no sales" in the state. In Iowa voluntary buffer strips and other conservation practices have simply failed desertifying parts of the state and causing the Raccoon River to be named one of the most endangered waterways in the United Snakes. 

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a $4.5 billion pipeline that would rip up over 700 miles of unceded tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried then pump carbon dioxide to some sacrifice zone in occupied North Dakota ostensibly to be sequestered. According to Iowa State University some land impacted by pipelines never recovers from the disturbance. 

Iowa's Republican governor is the most hated by a state's constituency in the country.

David Andrews’ farm is about nine miles away from the small, aptly named Iowa town of State Center. The 160-acre farm has been in his family since 1865, and Andrews grew up there. So, 30 years ago, he decided to plant 60- to 100-foot strips of tall grasses within and along the edges of fields to prevent erosion. To pay for it, he enrolled a total of 14 acres, made up of those strips, in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Project 2025, a conservative Republican presidential transition blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, proposes eliminating CRP. Project 2025 says farmers should not be allowed to get commodity payments if they get crop insurance subsidies. In Rep. Dusty Johnson’s case, when asked about conservation programs at the May equipment manufacturers’ panel, he answered with political dexterity, praising conservation programs but indicating he may in fact be on board with the RSC proposal to eliminate CRP. [Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country]

The US Army Corps of Engineers has put the upper Missouri River Basin on drought management status and tribes want to see the river managed more sustainably.

Despite Republican bellicosity the US Department of Agriculture has given South Dakota another $83 million for grassland conservation.

A respected Iowa poll just found that a majority of voters in that state support Vice President Kamala Harris for POTUS.

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