Latest big China "deal" does little for farmers

Or for anyone else. In their desperate efforts to produce some - indeed, any - kind of plausible false equivalence in the case of Trump, corporate “news” media has been pimping this as a triumph. Which is a preposterous, and pathetic, take.

The agricultural purchases required in the agreement are both vague and clearly far too small to restore even the conditions that existed before Trump’s actions sent China looking to South America and other regions to replace goods they would have previously purchased from America. In 2019, farm debt topped $416 billion—absolutely swamping the scale of Trump’s “enormous deal,” even when including non-agricultural products. 

Even as bankruptcy is up 24% in a single year, Trump is telling America’s farmers that it’s time to buy “much larger tractors” to generate all the grain required by this deal. Trump says that he expects China to buy $50 billion of U.S. agricultural products. That $50 billion figure is one that Trump has deployed before. It’s just that the date keeps shifting. And shifting. That number is imaginary, but the exploding farm debt and bankruptcies are very real. - Daily Kos

Trump trade war farm bailout keeps favoring the fat cats

As is noted later in this article, substantial sums are even finding their way to city slickers who wouldn't know how to plant a petunia.

EWG today released new USDA data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that show that the biggest, richest farmers continue to get the most MFP money.

Updated information in EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database show that from Aug. 19 to Oct. 31, MFP payments were about $6 billion, bringing the total for 2018 and 2019 to $14.5 billion. Of the payments since August, the top 10 percent of recipients – the largest, most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country – got half.

Three of these farming fat cats got more than $1 million each. Forty-five got more than $500,000 each, and 514 got more than $250,000, which under the program’s rules is supposed to be the limit any single recipient can get.

The richest of the rich, the top 1 percent of recipients, received 13 percent of payments. That’s an average payment of more than $177,000. But the bottom 80 percent of recipients, including small farmers, got an average payment of $5,136. - Environmental Working Group

This article, from Mother Jones, gets into Democratic presidential candidates' positions on food and farms.

Trump Ag Sec calls Minnesota farmers whiners, to their faces

It just never stops.

At a Farmfest listening session with farmers in Minnesota, (U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny) Perdue hit back at the complaints with his joke: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.”

As he pounded the table in mirth, some of the thousands of farmers at the event laughed nervously — which was followed by boos.

“It was definitely not an appropriate thing to say,” Minnesota Farmers Union President Gary Wertish told HuffPost. “It was very insensitive. It took everyone by surprise. He doesn’t understand what farmers are dealing with, and he’s the head of the Department of Agriculture. He’s supposed to be working for farmers.” - Huffington Post

This article, from Zero Hedge, summarizes what farmers and equipment manufacturers are facing right now.

China is not loading up on U.S. farm products

Yeah, guess who got totally suckered again.

In a humiliating (July 11) statement, Trump was forced to admit that he was wrong when he promised farmers that China would soon buy large quantities of American agricultural products.

Trump was reduced to groveling, essentially begging China to start buying products from U.S. farmers.

"China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully they will start soon!" - Shareblue

Though I don't often link to Politico, this one is important: "Trump's trade wars thrust farmers into desperation loans."