The last bite: Tariffs, economy and beans are hot topics at Minnesota Farmfest

Welcome to “the last bite,” an end-of-week food and ag roundup from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Reach out to business reporter Brooks Johnson at brooks.johnson@startribune.com to share your news and favorite canned vegetable brand.

Between tariff drama, low commodity prices, declining farm profitability and Make America Healthy Again, there was plenty to talk about at Minnesota Farmfest this year.

Reporters Christopher Vondracek and Jp Lawrence shared a few key quotes overheard at the annual Redwood County gathering earlier this week:

“Obviously, we at USDA are mindful that the farm economy is not where it should be and that the farm economy has had problems for the past several years, in no small part due to natural disasters,” said Stephen Vaden, the federal department’s deputy secretary of agriculture.

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said he was “cautiously optimistic” in farm country’s ability to weather the financial storm. But he was also “not confident” (and didn’t think anyone could be “confident”) in President Donald Trump‘s tariff regime.

Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen highlighted the trade tensions hampering export opportunities: “We’re sitting on a lot of corn, a lot of beans.”

Republican Rep. Brad Finstad, who represents southern Minnesota, said the trade pain is worth the payoff.

It’s the age of big food companies struggling to sell more food because consumers are tightening their budgets. But Eden Prairie-based SunOpta showed up this week with a whopping 14% volume growth in the past year.

“Fueled by the capacity we are creating each and every day in our production facilities, we continue delivering unit volume growth that is among the highest of all publicly traded companies in the food and beverage space,” CEO Brian Kocher told analysts this week.

The company, which primarily makes plant-based beverages for store brands, managed a $4.3 million profit on $191 million in revenue for the quarter that ended in June. That’s quite a turnaround from posting a $5 million loss at this time last year.

Inflation at the grocery store is still above average in several categories, namely meat, eggs and beverages. Yet prices for fresh vegetables actually fell 2% during the first six months of the year.

Years after learning about “volatility” in food prices when inflation really kicked into gear post-pandemic, consumers are finally seeing some falling and not just rising in the checkout lane.

Le Sueur canned vegetables — named, of course, for the county and city in Minnesota that birthed the brand alongside Green Giant — has a new corporate owner.

B&G Foods has sold the Le Sueur business to McCall Farms, which owns a number of regional canned food labels, for an undisclosed sum.

B&G also sold the Green Giant canned foods brand to Seneca Foods in 2023 and is reportedly looking to unload the frozen Green Giant portfolio it still owns. General Mills sold Green Giant and Le Sueur to B&G Foods in 2015 for $765 million.

About 200 legal immigrant workers recently had their visas revoked at the JBS pork plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, after the Trump administration ended a program that allowed clearance for workers from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Other meatpacking plants — including the JBS facility in Worthington, Minn. — are watching or even preparing for similar crackdowns. Poultry company Pilgrim’s Pride, which has a plant in Cold Spring, Minn., has been over-staffing “to prepare for those potential impacts in the labor market,” CEO Fabio Sandri told stock analysts recently.

“The administration is eliminating large portions of the meatpacking workforce, which will affect hog prices when packers can’t operate facilities at full capacity,” she said.

Minnesota is the second-largest pork producer in the country, after Iowa.