Farm Notes

Gary Trauner touched briefly on agriculture policy in yesterday’s podcast, but I wanted to drill in a bit on that topic since it’s getting a lot of publicity due to soybean prices crashing.

We had a family gathering the other night, and a couple people there were involved in the ag industry in different capacities. One of them runs cattle. They all were aware that soybeans were down due to Trump’s tariffs. But they were also aware that cattle prices are up, and Trump’s tariffs got credit for that.

The other fact that I need to emphasize every time farming comes up is that almost all farming happens on massive farms run by wealthy (at least wealthy in terms of land assets) farmers. The family farm is more-or-less a thing of the past. There are plenty of ag-adjacent jobs that don’t involve owning land, as well as a few small operators who rent land for hay or to run cattle, but landowners generally own a lot of land and they’re rich people who are natural Republicans.

When we talk about voters voting against their interests, it’s not at all clear-cut in farm country. If you’re a rancher running cattle, your interests are being served. If you’re a farmer farming grain, not so much, but you could easily have voted for Trump expecting a bailout, which is what happened last time he was in office.

This brings us to another subject: what are your “interests”? If, as Gary mentioned, your interest is owning the libs, that interest is being served. If you’re convinced that both parties are the same and the world is going to be shit no matter who you vote for, you’re going to vote for the politicians who hate the same people you’ve been taught to hate. The ascendence of Fox News, or just “the news” as it’s treated around here, is a big part of how people judge their interests in farm and ranch country.