Mount Vernon’s mayor Tom Wieseler and farmer and school board member Tim Keegan were featured in a bit of reporting from CBS Evening News this past week on the impact tariffs and this ongoing trade war are having on farmers.
As Keegan said, farmers aren’t like factories that can adjust their output to shifting winds easily. They commit at the beginning of a season to their crop – corn, soybeans, livestock – and hope the market will still be there.
“We’re forced to be forward thinking,” Keegan said.
When Trump put tariffs on a number of products from China, that has meant China has put their own tariffs on products, which include soybeans and pork. China is one of the largest markets for soybeans and pork in the world.
As Keegan said, weathering a short term inconvenience of a trade war is okay. But if that lasts for a longer term, it’s going to have a more devastating impact to producers who are planning what crops to grow each season.
Mayor Wieseler said some of those ripple effects will likely be felt in our local economy.
“We need our local farmers to be successful,” Wieseler said.
The cuts to United States Department of Agriculture that connect farmers to local food banks is also having an impact, as Iowa News Now reported this past week.
That $11 million dollars to the Local Food Purchasing Assistance program helped local food pantries be able to purchase food from local sources, including 300 farmers across the state and benefited $4.3 million worth of food in the last three years.
Southeast Linn Community Center director Nicole McAlexander said that demand at the food pantry was already high before this funding stream was impacted.
“The need is really high already. Last month, February, was our second busiest month in seven years. So, we just continue to see more and more people need help from food pantries, and that’s before any of these cuts,” McAlexander said. “We’re already seeing a hunger crisis and these cuts are just going to exacerbate that.”
The impacts of tariffs and cuts to national programs are continuing to be an ongoing issue in this community that impacts the cost of living and quality of life for us all.