The low prices and Trump’s trade war push these farmers from the northwest to the edge: NPR

Eaton, Wash.

Today, in the ports along the Snake river, the trucks unload the grain to five -story high floors along the banks. Most of the barges that stop at the terminals bear the equivalent of 150 semi-calves of cereals downstream in Portland.

As a rule, more than 90% of all wheat cultivated here is found in countries like Japan, Korea and the Philippines, where it is used for noodles, confections and crackers. This is how it has been happening for as long as Jim Moyer can remember. His family began to cultivate along the fertile fertile Palouse region in Washington in the 1890s.

“You can see the house and the buildings,” says Moyer, walking in a newly planted spring wheat field above the old farm and the family barns. “They have been there for over a hundred years.”

To the west, snow quickly melts blue mountains on the distant border of Washington-Oregon. In recent weeks has been drier than it preferred.

It has never been easy here, but right now, like almost never before, things feel like you are by the edge. Wheat prices are stubbornly low for years while inflation continues to be raised.

“”A combination is now a million dollars, a tractor is 500 to 750,000, a sprayer can be $ 750,000, “said Moyer.

And that does not seem that the prices will reduce these prices.

“The hypothesis was that it would have been done strategically, with reflection and planning,” explains Moyer. “We need certainty.”

Farmers are still recovering from Trump’s First Trade War

Uncertainty is something that people through the American heart speak, whether it be wheat producers in states like Washington or Montana, or corn and soy producers in Northern Dakota and Indiana. We do not yet know what farmers want to gain commercial policies of the second Trump Administration. Through the Rural Midwest and the West, many farmers still fly Trump 2024 on their barns, but are quietly fear that his last trade war goes bankrupt.

The American government has spent decades building markets abroad for crops like soybeans and wheat. But now all these agreements are in limbo.

Winter wheat grows on the Palouse in the east of Washington State

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Kirk Siegler / NPR

In the state of Washington, Jim Moyer says that wheat farmers are still recovering from the trade war during Trump’s first term when the transpacific popular partnership was torn apart. He fears that irreparable damage has already been made with trade agreements that have taken decades to build.

“If you turn off the relationship, it is much more difficult to turn it on and recover this when, in the meantime, the person with whom you exchanged, they found someone else,” explains Moyer.

When asked if there was a feeling of disconnection at the moment between the White House and the country of the farm, Moyer replied: “You know, I don’t know, I try not to go there,, I don’t have much control about it. “”

There is still a large support for Trump in the agricultural country

People here do not want to talk about a lot of politics at the moment with everything that is so polarized, and with current prices, then removed, then raised. Washington is perhaps a blue state in national politics, but there is only one county east of the waterfall mountains which has not voted for Trump in three cycles since 2016.

“Obviously, agricultural communities are roughly republican,” explains Byron Behne, a merchanter of the grain Growers Northwest, cooperative belonging to farmers in Walla Walla, Washington.

Behne grew up in a wheat farm near the Grand Doublee dam. He says that farmers are perplexed by the rhetoric of the White House, especially after Trump declared on his social media platform that farmers should prepare to provide America and “have fun”.

“Even people who are among his strongest supporters were somehow looking at this and going, what does it really mean?” Said Behne.

North West states – Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon – have some of the highest wheat yields in the world; More than the United States could never consume. Behne says it would be difficult to suddenly reduce all of this or slow down or stop exporting.

Many things also need farmers, fertilizer tractor parts, should be imported.

“You can’t just build a new factory to produce this kind of thing here,” said Behne. “I mean, I understand that this is the objective declared by the administration, but this kind of thing does not happen overnight.”

This would be equivalent to a pain generation, says Behne.

Why farmers are concerned with an imminent depression

Farmer Jim Moyer, who recently retired as a scientist and dean of the Washington State University, worried that many of his neighbors do not survive if uncertainty persists.

“”Next year, it will not be pretty, “says Moyer.” Agriculture will be changed forever. “”

It is a country of belts. Most farmers do not have much, if irrigation and they cannot simply change crops easily.

Anxiety is palpable here. Just above the state line of Oregon, Paul Reed and his family try to do it and stay optimistic.

Paul Reed, 20

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“”Yeah, so most of that, my great-grandfather started, “said Reed, standing in a field of perfect rows of winter wheat, his stems about one foot and a half, lush and green.

Reed is only twenty years old. He has just finished a diploma in culture management partner at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon. He will be the 4th generation that will direct the farm of his family to the retirement of his uncle.

“”Yeah it’s difficult, I mean, everyone tells me that you are going to the worst moment, “said Reed.” This is probably true, but if we have been able to do it for as long as we do – I must have hope. “”

No one here really spends money, investing in new equipment or having a lot of hiring. Reed tries not to look at the news.

“Everything talks until it happens.

Reed changes from his operation to grass and lawn lawn where he can. He also hopes to send more cereals to local leaflets instead of Down to the River for export. He is one of the dozens of farmers looking for positive points, when uncertainty governs the day.

This story is part of American Voices, an occasional series of NPR National Desk which explores how the first policies of President Trump take place across the country.