When you are farming, you are faced with a lot of unknowns - What will the weather be like? Will these low prices ever recover? Our corn and soybeans are planted on my Illinois farm. They are up and it is time to spray to kill weeds. We are ready. But just last week the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court ruled that herbicides whose active ingredient is dicamba cannot be used. We already paid for that weed killer. We have been using chemical Roundup for years. Suddenly out of nowhere, we were unsure about what to do. Suddenly, Monday evening this week, EPA announced farmers can still spray dicamba on our crops. The weed killer can only be used until July 31. For the Court to throw a wrench into the works just when we needed to spray was the ultimate of inconsideration. Thank God and the EPA – we will be spraying this weed killer unless another roadblock is thrown up. If you are in the business of farming, you never know what your next challenge will be. That is true with a lot of small family businesses you see them on television where their stores have been destroyed and looted by rioters. Who would have ever expected this? Peaceful protests are fine. I read an article about an Idaho city. Many heavily armed citizens came out to support peaceful protesters and protect local businesses and citizens against shipped in ANTIFA members, but when they saw the local defense, they did not cause any trouble. They knew that looting and destruction would not be tolerated. A local citizen, Brett Surplus drove into the city and here is what he saw- “Wall to wall with armed citizens walking the streets and sidewalks making their powerful presence known. Good guys with guns keep bad guys with evil intent away.” I know this kind of defense could work in rural America but in our big cities – not a chance. I know that the message is out that there are some bad cops, but the vast majority are great. More than 70% of our citizens think our police do a good job. The far left are demanding that we “defund the police”. That would result in more crime. The debate goes on. Stores are opening and the crops are in God’s hands now.

The Coronavirus came out of nowhere and has crippled the world economy, killing thousands and thousands of people. The virus is not through yet either. Look at Brazil. President Trump just shut off travel from Brazil to the US. As our new cases have declined, things are getting better here. Our economy is starting to open up. We can’t stay locked down. China is where the virus originated. Loud voices screaming from both parties to see who can be tougher on China. China allowed the virus to spread all over the world and now they plan to put a heavy hand on Hong Kong. Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden says President Trump is too soft on China. What should the US response be? Will President Trump abandon the “Phase One” China trade deal? Let’s hope not. China has committed to buy $80 billion of ag products. President Trump negotiated a good deal for the US and especially agriculture. He made progress on protecting our intellectual property. Turn to the UK – Prime Minister Johnson wants a comprehensive trade deal with the US and he wants it done soon. We are ready but the fact that the UK has not finalized a trade deal in their separation from the European Union may be a problem. Speaking of the EU, they have adopted some sweeping goals for their agriculture industry that to me are shocking. They want to transform how Europeans farm and what they eat. They want 25% of their food production to be organic. They want to dramatically reduce the chemicals used in farming by 50%. Fertilizer is to be cut by 20%. If they don’t use some chemicals to kill the weeds, they will need a lot more labor to hoe the crops. They don’t use biotechnology now to keep the corn borer and root worms at bay. That’s one reason why they use more pesticides than we do. Their goal is to reduce carbon emissions and improve water quality. That’s good. But here is what will happen. They will produce less food. We all know that organic farming delivers less food. If the farmers of the world don’t accept and utilize new technology, yields could be 30% less. Who is going to starve? Of course, the world could cut down more forest land in order to produce enough food. I don’t think the EU plan makes much sense. Until next week, this is John Block reporting from Washington, D.C. If you would like to review my radio shows going back more than 20 years, just go on-line to www.johnblockreports.com.

. There is no shortage of issues to talk about. I am so sick of listening to the left wing politicians’ constant attack on President Trump and the impeachment hysteria. Get over it! If you don’t like him, we have an election next November and you can vote for his challenger. Of course, no one knows who that will be. It is all politics. USMCA, which is a much-improved trade agreement over NAFTA is just sitting there waiting for the House to vote. They don’t want to give Trump a victory.

I was on my farm last week. What a relief to escape this circus of a federal government that we have here in DC. Instead of passing necessary legislation, every conflict, every decision is all politics. Nancy Pelosi won’t bring the USMCA trade deal up for a vote. Every day Democrats come up with one more demand. We must insist on an inspection of Mexican factories to ensure that they meet our labor rules. They must build new infrastructure to present cross-border pollution. Now they want to add some language to the trade bill to protect pensions of union members. Our Congress has serious work to do. The current resolution to keep our government open for business expires November 21. Not much time and we don’t have a House-Senate spending agreement. We could get one, but the clock is ticking. They could pass another resolution to extend the time to keep the government in business. Or they could fail and close down the government. What a dysfunctional nightmare. They don’t have time to do their job. They are too busy trying to impeach President Trump.