Low prices and Trump's trade war are pushing these northwest farmers to the edge: NPR

Eaton, Wash. -In the New Deal -era, the mighty rivers of the northwest were thawed, so that the load barges were cheap to bring grain from the wheat fields of the East Washing tone to the coast for export.

Today, trucks in the ports on the Snake River unload the grain into five -story high containers along the banks. Most load barges that occur up to the terminals carry the equivalent of 150 semi -cars worth grain to Portland.

Usually, more than 90 percent of all wheat grown here end up in countries such as Japan, Korea and the Philippines, where they are used for pasta, confectionery and crackers. It is as long as Jim Moyer can remember. His family began for the first time in the 1890s with agriculture along the rolling, fertile Palouse region of Washington.

“You can see the house and the buildings,” says Moyer and goes through a newly planted field of spring wheat over the old farmhouse and barn of the family. “You have been there for well over a hundred years.”

In the west, snow quickly melts from the Blue Mountains on the remote Washington-Oregon border. These last few weeks were drier than he would prefer.

It has never been easy out here, but at the moment, like almost never before, things feel like they are on the side. Wheat prices have been stubbornly low for years, while inflation is still high.

“A combine is one million dollars, a tractor is 500 to 750,000, a spray unit can be $ 750,000, ”says Moyer.

And it doesn't look like the tariffs are reducing these prices.

“The assumption was that it would have been strategic, strategic with some thoughts and planning,” says Moyer. “We need certainty.”

The farmers are still recovering from the first Trump trade war

Uncertainty is something that people talk about all over America's core country, be it wheat farmers in countries such as Washington or Montana or corn and soybean farmers in North Dakota and Indiana. It is still unclear which farmers from the trade policy of the second Trump government are gaining. Over the rural middle west and west, many farmers still fly over their barns in 2024 flags, but tacitly fear that his recent trade war will make them bankrupt.

The US government spent decades of building overseas for plants such as soybeans and wheat. But now all of these agreements are in the floating.

According to Jim Moyer in the state of Washington, wheat farmers are still recovering from the trade war in Trump's first term when the popular transacific partnership was torn. He is concerned that irreparable damage has already been caused by trading transactions whose construction decades took.

“If you turn off the relationship, it is much more difficult to turn it on again and get it back if the person you acted with in the meantime have found someone to others,” says Moyer.

When asked whether there is a feeling of separation between the White House and the Landland at the moment, Moyer replied: “You know, I don't know, I'm not trying to go therePresent I don't have much control over it. “

There is still broad support for Trump in the agricultural country

People here do not want to talk much about politics at the moment when everything is so polarized and switched on with tariffs and then withdrawn and then continues again. Washington may be a blue state in national politics, but there is only one district east of the Cascade Mountains, who have not voted for Trump in three cycles since 2016.

“Obviously, farm communities are pretty republican,” says Byron Beny, a Merchandiser at the Northwest Grain Growers, a cooperative in farmers in Walla Walla, Washington.

Grew up on a wheat farm near the Grand Couleee Dam. He says that farmers are confused by the rhetoric of the White House, especially after Trump said on his social media platform that farmers should be ready to deliver America and “have fun”.

“Even the people who are some of his strongest supporters looked at that and what does that really mean?” Behne says.

The northwest states – Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon – have some of the world's highest wheat yields; More than the United States could ever consume. Behne says it would be difficult to wait or slow or export all of this abruptly.

Many things also need that farmers need, from tractor parts to fertilizers must be imported.

“You can't just build a new factory here to produce this stuff here,” says Behne. “I mean, I understand that this is the specified goal of the administration, but this stuff does not happen overnight.”

It would equate a generation of pain, says Behne.

Why farmers worry about impending depression

Farmer Jim Moyer, who recently retired as a scientist and dean at Washington State University, fears that many of his neighbors will not survive if the uncertainty remains.

“It won't be pretty next year, “says Moyer.” Agriculture is changed forever. “

This is dry wheat land. Most farmers don't have much, albeit no irrigation and they cannot simply change the plants.

Fear is noticeable here. Paul Reed and his family try to ride and stay optimistic directly above the state border in Oregon.

“Yup, most of it, started my great -grandfather, “says Reed and is in a field of perfect winter wheat, his stems are about one and a half foot high, lush and green.

Reed is only twenty years old. He has just completed an Associate's Degree in Crop Management at Blue Mountain Community College in nearby Pendleton, Oregon. He will be the 4th generation that his family's farm runs when his uncle is retiring.

“Yes, it's difficult, I mean, everyone tells myself that you are going in at the worst time, “says Reed.

Nobody here really spends money out here, invests in new devices or makes a lot of attitude. Reed tries not to look at the news.

“Everything has been talking until it actually happens. I don't spend much of my day worried about some conversations that I hear unless it starts to become something that will actually happen,” he says.

Reed changes more from his operation to grass and lawn turf wherever he can. He also hopes to send more grain to local feed slots instead of exporting to the river. He is one of the numerous farmers who are looking for a few positive when the uncertainty rules during the day.

This story is part of American Voices, an occasional NPR National Desk series, in which it is examined how the early guidelines of President Trump take place across the country.