I heard at my forum last night that African swine fever is killing China’s hogs, so China will have to buy our pork and eat their counter-tariffs.
Um, no:
U.S. pork sales to China are “not viable” after Beijing earlier this year imposed tariffs on imports of American pork, Smithfield Foods’ chief executive said on Friday, as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies threatened a nearly $500 million business for U.S. hog farmers.
The decline in meat exports to China, the world’s top consumer of pork, adds to pain felt by farmers caught in the crossfire of the trade dispute. In April, China slapped a 25 percent import duty on most U.S. pork items, retaliating against U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products. Pork also was included in a second round of tariffs introduced in July [Michael Hirtzer and Tom Polansek, “U.S. Pork Exports to China ‘Not Viable’ Due to Trade War—Smithfield CEO,” CNBC, 2018.10.26].
My interlocutor also claimed that soybean farmers hit by the Trump tariffs that have shut of the Chinese market can just build more bins, store their beans, and look for new markets.
Stored beans don’t pay the bills:
[Iowa farmer Branon] Osmundson says the price he will get is $2 per bushel lower than last year because of the uncertainty in the export market. That could end up costing him tens of thousands of dollars [Amy Mayer, “Caught Between Trump’s Tariffs and Tax Changes, Soybean Farmers Face Uncertain Future,” NPR: The Salt, 2018.10.26].
…and the slow hunt for new markets creates a logistical mess:
Exporters are slowly finding new buyers in Europe, South America and Africa. But to reach those nations, the beans must be shipped from different U.S. ports, located either on the East Coast or the Gulf of Mexico. This creates a logistical challenge, as exporters look for ways to move massive quantities of soy to these new harbors.
“It’s chaos, the whole system right now,” said Bruce Abbe, president and CEO of the Midwest Shippers Association.
The problem is for many areas of the Midwest, especially the upper Midwest, there are no direct shipping routes to Gulf ports, Abbe said. Shippers trying to reach them are carving new paths — trucking the beans for long distances to the Mississippi River, then loading them onto river barges for the remainder of the journey….
“It takes a long time to develop river and barge systems,” Abbe said. “They haven’t seen anything like this.”
The reason is America’s soy industry is designed to supply beans to China [Jessie Higgins, “U.S. Experiences ‘Soybean Backup’ as Exporters Struggle to Sell,” UPI, 2018.10.29].
Soybean and pork exports are down for Indiana farmers:
Just as President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to Indianapolis on Saturday to speak to the national Future Farmers of America convention to talk about agriculture, Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, the campaign against tariffs, has released data showing that Indiana exports of pork to Mexico and soybeans to China have stalled since the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and the retaliatory tariffs on U.S. farm products went into effect.
The data, which was compiled by The Trade Partnership from U.S. Census Bureau and USDA data… show that Indiana pork exports to Mexico had been nearly double in the first four months of 2018 ($18 million in January-April 2018 vs $9.3 million in January-April 2017). However, growth slowed to +24 percent year-over-year in May, when new retaliatory tariff became a possibility, then fell to -3 percent, +3 percent, and -3 percent in June/July/August when tariffs actually went into place.
The data released also shows a 34 percent year-to-date drop in soybean exports to China compared with last year. For the most recent monthly data in August 2018, soybeans saw a 95 percent drop as compared to August 2017 [The Hagstrom Report, “Tariff Data on Indiana Released Ahead of Trump Speech,” The Fence Post, 2018.10.26].
Trump’s election-buying welfare payments to tariff-stricken farmers won’t build new infrastructure to redirect our crop exports to Europe, South America, and Africa. Trump’s farm welfare checks won’t even focus on helping American farmers. The Washington Post confirms what was reported last summer: some of Trump’s tariff-reparation money could go to Smithfield Foods, the big pork producer owned by China:
Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based pork producer acquired in 2013 by a Chinese conglomerate now named WH Group, can apply for federal money under the bailout program created this summer, said Agriculture Department spokesman Carl E. Purvis.
…The bailout program has also angered smaller hog producers, who expressed frustration that it appears likely to help large, international farms that already dominate the U.S. pork market.
“It’s just going to help the big boys, like JBS and Smithfield,” said Chris Petersen, 63, who owns a few hundred hogs on a farm in north-central Iowa. “I’m very concerned because of the political power and the power of money and big corporations. The taxpayers should be up in arms over this.”
In a statement, Smithfield Foods declined to say whether it has applied to participate in the purchase program. Keira Lombardo, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Smithfield, said in an email that the company meets the U.S. Agriculture Department’s eligibility standards and that “any approved vendor that can supply the requested product can bid for the contract” [Jeff Stein, “Chinese-Owned Pork Producer Qualifies for Money Under Trump’s Farm Bailout,” Washington Post via Chicago Tribune, 2018.10.23].
So we’re exporting less pork and soybeans to China… but we’re exporting more federal welfare dollars. That makes sense.
A couple of farmers have got it figured out, this is a bailout for the “big boys” as always. Why on earth would they want to send Dirty Johnson to Washington to continue the blood letting? trump and his republican accomplices need to be muzzled, Dirty Johnson would continue the demise of the family farm while having fond memories of his Russian pal Marina Butina and her charm fest to South Dakota Republicans.
Speaking of Russian pigs, looks like Russia will be able to move more pork production into exports for the coming year.
https://www.pigprogress.net/World-of-Pigs1/Articles/2018/5/Russia-continues-to-build-swine-farms-despite-oversupply-281890E/
My my, Russia increases production of soybeans and of pork for export to you know where. trump/NOem and the potential of Dirty Johnson, Making Russia Great Again! Even with the red hats, how appropriate.
Farmers are living with this mess. Day in. Day out. It’s not going away. And elected GOPs don’t care. They are standing by their man. If farmers want complete trade chaos for the next 2 years they should vote GOP party. If they want an end to the madness they need to turn out the GOP party Trump enablers.
Hey farmers, remember when Trump came to SD just a few weeks ago and said his policies aren’t hurting you – you were going to lose your farms anyway.
Please do not forget the raw deal dairy farmers got with the new NAFTA trade deal with Canada that for some inexplicable reason a certain troll hasn’t been barking about it.
I’m guessing river barges and truckers and railroads will be holding farmers and elevators hostage when it comes to shipping grain. Like US steel companies raised domestic steel prices, even though they were themselves exempt from tariffs, shippers will try to make a killing from Drumpf loving farmers.
Drumpf is talking about adding more tariffs if China continues to defy Drumpf’s demands.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2018/09/21/trump-china-trade-war-effects-iowa-agriculture-farming-exports-tariffs-canada-pork-soybeans-steel/1368546002/
Newer Iowa State Uni study on potential cost to iowa, iowa’s taxes, iowa farmers and iowa’s status as second largest exporter of US ag products.
We have seen shooting ourselves in the foot destroy crop opportunities, what will we do when the climate changes to destroy our crops in the field here? Lest anyone think that the exodus from Central America is coming here because of anything but forced migration due to climate change.
Don’t think it can’t happen here? It has, not that may years ago either. Most of the old timers that remember it are either gone or near gone, but it was bad, and many migrated. You can see that in the many ghost towns and abandoned farmsteads that still have some remains of old barns and foundations.
Now would be a good time to put much of our farm ground into soil banks to protect what we have for those days that are coming.
Soil banks. YES!! Within 20 years beef will come from a laboratory. Cars will run on hydrogen. Milk and vegetables will be grown from stem cells. Winter Is Coming, SD. Are you able to change without being grumpy all the time? Hmmmmm??
Porter, at the University of Mexico, they are working now on natural feed for cattle that will curtail the belching that produces methane. The problem with that is the natural feed is not able to sustain itself this far north, but there are two plants that they now have identified that grow wild in central America, Mexico and in Texas. So we will still be chewing on the fat only more organic and grass fed.
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-seaweed-relieve-gassy-cows-dairy.html
From Holland and other places.
Yellow Marmot isn’t operating from any trade strategy. This is all about his tender feelings, narcissism, craving to be The Best Biggest, and generalized lack of sanity, all enabled by the Pootiepublicans. It matters not one whit to him how many farmers, elevators, families, or small businesses are destroyed. That’s irrelevant in his tiny world.
When a malignant narcissist runs the country and the party with power is treasonously corrupt, this kind of wholesale destruction ensues.
VOTE DEMOCRATIC! VOTE DEMOCRATIC! VOTE DEMOCRATIC! ON ALL LEVELS!
If Chinese hogs have ASF and China owns Smithfield in USA and China is looking for ways to retaliate against Trump Tariffs then … uh,oh
From China, the virus could also spread elsewhere; if it becomes endemic, “it will represent a major threat for the rest of the world, including the American continent,” says François Roger, an animal epidemiologist at the Agricultural Research Center for International Development.
The virus that causes ASF (African Swine Fever) does not harm humans, but it spreads rapidly among domestic pigs and wild boars through direct contact or exposure to farm workers’ contaminated shoes, clothing, and equipment. It can survive heat and cold and persists for weeks in carcasses, feces, and fresh and semicured pork products, such as sausages. Ticks can also spread it. Infection causes a high fever, internal bleeding, and, often, death. There is no ASF vaccine and no treatment for infected animals.
Thanks mfi on the seaweed, here is the link for the Mexican studies
“The Mexican researchers have found two animal food sources offering promising results: leaves from the leucaena tree and the flowers of the cosmos plant. Both plants grow in warm climates.
The researchers found that cows who ate grass mixed with the leucaena leaves belched about 36 percent less methane than a diet of grass alone. The cosmos flower reduced these emissions by 26 percent when mixed with the animal’s feed.
In addition, the two plants do not have a harmful effect on milk and meat production. In fact, the researchers found that leuceana leaves improve the quality of cow milk. This can give Mexican farmers more reason to grow the plants and change their cattle’s diet.”https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/scientists-find-way-to-reduce-methane-from-cows/3725967.html
Cosmos are such pretty flowers. How cool to imagine farmers growing fields of cosmos!
Look here, lovely: 😁
https://goo.gl/DWGK7z