Corn and soybean growers meeting at this year’s Commodity Classic wrestled with the potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping actions on trade and federal spending cuts.
Biofuel policy, pesticide regulation and liability protection for farm chemical manufacturers were debated by National Corn Growers Association and American Soybean Association delegates.
On Sunday, just before Trump imposed new tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, ASA delegates adopted a resolution emphasizing the need to support growers during market volatility.
They reaffirmed ASA’s support for USDA's use of the Commodity Credit Corp. – created in the 1930s to stabilize and support farm income – in difficult times. During Trump’s first term, the administration drew from the CCC to fund the Market Facilitation Program that helped producers offset export losses from retaliatory tariffs.
There are concerns, however, that the CCC may not be able to fully cover the cost of tariffs to U.S. producers this time. USDA estimates tariff actions under Trump’s first term shrunk U.S. ag exports by around $27 billion, and tariffs proposed so far in his second term are even broader.
CCC borrowing is capped at $30 billion at any one time, absent further congressional action, according to USDA, suggesting farm losses could easily outgrow financial assistance. USDA’s available CCC spending authority has recently been down to $4 billion, according to sources.
In addition to backing the CCC authority, the association approved a new resolution supporting the development of further testing standards around used cooking oil imports.
The Treasury Department published guidance for the 45Z biofuel tax credit established under the Inflation Reduction Act in January before Trump took office. While that guidance appeared to limit eligibility of used cooking oil imports as a biofuel feedstock, it will be up to the Trump administration to finalize the rules.
“Current tax guidance notes the development of new guidance related to the validity of imports, and ASA will likely decide to engage directly,” an annotation on ASA’s proposed resolution read.
Delegates disagreed about language related to global food aid. ASA has supported the Food for Peace program administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development and endorsed a legislative effort to preserve the program amid USAID cuts by moving it to USDA.
The program buys around $110 million of U.S. soy each year, according to an ASA statement.
A proposed resolution pledged ASA’s support for work to address global hunger and malnutrition by procuring domestic commodities and insisted that food aid is critical to U.S. national security. It also included language asserting that food aid programs “should not be subject to government spending freezes or reductions.”
Richard Wilkins, chair of the mid-Atlantic ASA, appealed to delegates to strike language suggesting food aid should be protected from spending freezes or reductions.
“If it is necessary to reduce government spending for our national interest,” Wilkins said, “I would not believe that we should exempt out these programs.”
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The motion was carried in a voice vote and the language removed.
Virginia Houston, ASA’s director of government affairs, said the vote was a result of farmers being “fiscally minded” but said that the “meat of the resolution” remains unchanged.
“U.S. soybean farmers still affirmed their strong support for U.S. food aid programs as a foundation for trade,” she said. “We have our direction on where to go, and we still support these programs very strongly.”
Gena Perry (ASA photo)Part of the challenge of building support for food aid is that the domestic economic benefits are not always obvious to those not directly involved, Gena Perry, executive director of ASA’s World Initiative for Soy in Human Health, told Agri-Pulse later. She said policymakers and others don’t always realize that food aid programs buy commodities at full market prices from U.S. farmers.
“I think that has been lost in the conversation,” Perry said. “It's not a donation.”
“It’s one of the greatest marketing tools that we have,” Perry added, because food aid introduces U.S. agricultural products into markets they may not otherwise penetrate. “This is multi-layered, and it's complicated.”
NCGA delegates on Tuesday adopted by a 59% to 41% vote a resolution opposed to a proposed exemption for pesticide manufacturers from liability for health harm caused by future products.
Steve Kuiper, a farmer from Knoxville, Iowa, said he supports a Bayer-backed bill currently in the Iowa legislature that would protect pesticide makers from lawsuits that allege they failed to warn consumers about hazards as long as the companies followed EPA labeling requirements.
He told Agri-Pulse the resolution is aimed at preventing companies from getting blanket liability for harm that new products might cause for human health or the environment. “That liability should not fall on us” as farmers, he said.
The NCGA resolution reads, "We recognize that companies manufacturing pesticides provide valuable tools that are needed by farmers and support the scientific-based approval of such products for use by farmers, however, we do not support blanket immunity from ongoing or potential lawsuits that may emerge in the future should a product be found to be unsafe such as causing cancer or death."
Steve Kuiper (Iowa Corn photo)At this year's meeting, NCGA delegates also considered concerns about the impact of closing USDA agencies' local offices. A resolution by Indiana delegates proposed to “support sufficiently staffed and resourced USDA offices to carry out the important necessary work for the United States corn farming operations.”
One Indiana delegate said that farmers were “seeing a decrease in staff and it's taking longer to get funding out to the local agricultural community.”
The resolution was adopted by voice vote with an amendment that added a clause asking that USDA offices have updated software, technology and resources to complete their work.
A separate resolution backed the use of "science-based, narrowly defined maps" to target protection for endangered and threatened species from pesticide use. The goal is to ensure "protection measures are reasonable and supported by clear science," according to the resolution, which was adopted by voice vote.
On trade policy, NCGA delegates also adopted a resolution by voice vote calling for reciprocal access to markets with trade barriers against imports of U.S. products.
An Illinois delegate said that “with the political climate changing, we feel that this just gives the staff and more more leniency to be able to work and communicate with this change landscape.”
Brazil's 18% tariff on U.S. ethanol has long frustrated the U.S. industry.
“I don't think it's fair. It's not an even playing field. And, you know, there is a lot of things where other countries have been kind of taking advantage of the U.S.,” said Kuiper, the Iowa delegate.
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