The Real Price Farmers are Paying Amid China Trade Tensions
Bloomberg caught up with April Hemmes, an Iowa farmer who grows 1,000 acres of soybeans and corn, at the Women in Agribusiness Summit in Denver during the last week of September. There, Hemmes addressed the real price that farmers are paying amid the ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China.
Hemmes states that the possibility of tariffs early in the year led her to lock in a price for half of her soybean crop, however, now that harvests are beginning and the trade dispute between the U.S. and China has intensified, the cash offers she is seeing are below her cost of production. As a result, she will be keeping the second half of her crop in storage.
Growers of sorghum, a crop that has been very dependent on the Chinese market, are also facing seriously low trading volumes and plummeting prices. Corn and wheat, which are less dependent on Chinese buyers, present a bright spot for grain growers, however, overall sentiment of agricultural producers has been gauged by CMRE Group Inc. to be at its lowest in nearly two years.
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