A season of uncertainty: This harvest, a Minnesota farm family feels the fallout of Trump-era trade

Opinion editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series of columns about the impact of federal decisions on agriculture, with a focus on one particular Minnesota farm family, the Johnsons. A final installment is anticipated at the year’s end. Visit these links to read the first and second columns of this series.

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KENYON, Minn. — “Combine’s stuck.”

With that brusque announcement from a neighbor enlisted as harvest help, the synchronized movements of men and machinery grind to a halt on Ben and Meredith Johnson’s Goodhue County farm.

Ben’s father, Steve Johnson, is at the helm of the disabled Case IH 8250 combine. He’d steered it onto a boggy patch while crossing into another field, miring it in mud. Now, everything’s on hold. The tractor pulling the grain cart to collect the crop from the combine is idle. So is the truck ferrying the crop to the farmstead’s towering steel bins or the nearby commercial grain elevator.

Thanks to Ben, it’s a minor ground stop. He calmly drives another tractor out to the 50,000-pound combine, attaches cables and pulls it free. “I always say my job is putting out fires. This is today’s fire,” said Johnson, who serves as the farm’s chief troubleshooter.

Across Minnesota’s grain belt, crews of family, friends and hired help fight an annual battle against time, rain, machinery malfunctions and fatigue to bring in corn and soybean crops before winter. This year, a successful harvest requires navigating another challenge: the downstream consequences of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs to reshape global trade.

The corn and soybeans grown by the Johnsons on the 2,500 acres they own and rent near Kenyon (population 1,872) are among Minnesota’s and the nation’s top exports. Those crops fuel the economy, but reopening trade talks brings regional risks, especially those involving China, a leading market for many Midwestern agricultural products.

Among the Johnsons’ concerns: retaliatory measures by other countries undermining demand for what they produce, which includes 7,000 weaner pigs. And, that U.S. tariffs could raise the cost of machinery, fertilizer and other equipment they depend on, with materials often internationally sourced.

In the months since tariffs were enacted, the couple has watched many of their fears play out, including one of their biggest: an erosion of U.S. soybean sales to China. It’s the world’s leading soybean importer by a wide margin. Even if there are gains made selling soybeans elsewhere, setbacks in this supersized Asian market could easily negate them.

China is the world’s leading consumer of soybeans due to its massive hog and poultry populations, which feed an exploding middle class with an insatiable demand for the protein.

During a three-month stretch this summer, soybean shipments to China essentially ground to a halt. But in late October, U.S. officials announced a truce in which China agreed to buy 12 million metric tons before the end of the year and then, resume purchasing at previous levels of at least 25 million annually through 2028.

But on the Johnson farm, wariness outweighs optimism. Ben and Meredith harbor doubts about the durability and enforceability of the new agreement. Few publicly released details are currently available. If China doesn’t buy the announced amounts, for which there’s a recent historical precedent, what happens then?

As for the salutary effect on soybean prices, Ben laments markets that are driven more by presidential tweets than facts. “It’s not ‘Hey, we’ve made a big sale.’ It’s ‘No, I think we’re going to make a big sale’ so the market jumps,” Ben said. “We could give it all back in two days,” he said of the higher soybean prices.

“Maybe I’m more pessimistic than most, but we’ve been here before, so we’ve heard all about all the deals that are going to happen and then they don’t.”

When I last visited the Johnson farm, it was mid-August and it looked like a bumper year. The corn was especially impressive. Developing ears had a beefy circumference with plump kernels running their length.

Rain at the right time and cooperative temperatures created what Ben thought might be one of the best growing seasons of his lifetime, inspiring hope that higher yields could offset the sting of comparatively low corn and bean prices. Having more crop to sell cushions against low prices and dilutes operating costs.

Still, U.S. corn exports have been a bright spot in an otherwise challenging year. A September U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report projected a 100-million-bushel increase in 2025-26 corn exports, with the total amount a little less than 3 billion bushels. Main destinations are Mexico, Japan and South Korea.

Unfortunately, corn prices remain below Johnsons’ breakeven point. This critical calculation weighs revenue against production costs, which have increased. Soybean prices, even with a rally after the China purchase announcement, also aren’t above the Johnsons’ breakeven point.

Factors driving crop prices are complex. But diminished demand from China, the world’s dominant soybean export market, has clearly had a role in depressing soybean prices. The Trump administration and China at one point were slapping triple-digit tariffs on each other earlier this year. One of China’s responses: wielding its soybean purchasing power like a club.

“From January through August 2025, U.S. soybean exports to China totaled just 218 million bushels, down sharply from 985 million bushels in 2024, when China purchased about half of all U.S. soybean exports. During June, July and August, the U.S. shipped virtually no soybeans to China,” according to a U.S. Farm Bureau Federation report.

Downstream consequences were inevitable.

Fortunately, the Johnsons have a diversified operation, with income from the weaner pigs and from Meredith’s off-farm employment as a teacher and a part-time job in financial services. Their operation is also still riding the momentum of several strong years for corn and beans. The family has weathered other downturns but foresees a challenging 2026.

Complications include a looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could negate Trump’s tariff authority, resulting in more uncertainty for their markets. It’s also unclear how new trade agreements will ultimately play out. As the Johnsons note, the deal with China doesn’t appear to have increased the soybeans China will buy. Instead it looks like China will resume buying what it did previously.

“Did something else get better because of what we went through? Then maybe it was worth it. But if the goal is just to get back to where we were, then we are going through a lot of things for no reason,” Ben said.

The couple also point out that there were no enforcement mechanisms in the trade agreement the first Trump administration reached with China after a 2018-19 trade dispute, allowing the Asian nation to duck commitments to buy American soybeans. It now sources 71% of its soybean imports from Brazil.

Vilsack underscored the Johnsons’ concerns, telling me that China “made the same commitments the last time and they didn’t keep the commitments,” he said, adding that “if you don’t have a mechanism to enforce, then what you have is an agreement that can be changed tomorrow.”

That response is far from reassuring and raises the same question about deals with other nations. Far preferable would be specific enforcement mechanisms memorialized in traditional trade treaties. Without them, the door is open for tariffs to be hiked in knee-jerk fashion in response to future conflicts or perceived slights. This jeopardizes the stable markets that farmers like the Johnsons need and deserve.

With the corn and soybean crop harvested, the conversation at the Johnsons’ kitchen table turned to marketing their crops at a tough time and finding ways to reduce their expenses.

Right now, they’re talking with advisers about options contracts — a financial tool that gives farmers a way to protect themselves from falling commodity prices. They are also driving some soybeans to Mankato, where a crushing plant in late October paid about $1.10 more per bushel than local buyers.

The downside of that hourlong trek: the costs of trucking and the considerable wait time once you arrive because other farmers are doing the same. The crushing plant parking lot has a camera that can be accessed online. Meredith pulled out her phone, showing how they monitor the lot to gauge the least crowded time to drive there. Often, it’s the middle of the night.

Another option is storing more crop in hopes of better prices down the road. But that strategy isn’t a panacea. The Johnsons are limited by the storage capacity of the grain bins they currently have. The cost of new bins can easily top $1 million, meaning they just can’t add them easily.

Cutting expenses, which would lower their breakeven point, is another strategy. But the trade conflict has tied their hands there, too. The average tariff on imported farm inputs has climbed from roughly 1% to about 12%, according to the North Dakota State University Agricultural Trade Monitor. “The steepest increases are in pesticides, with herbicides and other chemical treatments jumping close to 25%. Machinery and equipment also see notable hikes, with tractors and related parts generally in the 13–16% range.”

Nor is it easy to lower personal expenses. Meredith is seeing inflation’s effects at the grocery store, flashing a Hy-Vee receipt for several hundred dollars just for weekly basics for their family of five. “I got orange juice. I bought Halloween candy. I guess maybe I splurged?”

The couple is digging in for another lean year but says that ups and downs are part of running a business. They say they’re up to the challenge. They’ll look at their balance sheet numbers, make it work and hope that Minnesota’s congressional delegation heeds their plea to calm the trade turbulence.

“We always know that the weather is going to be an issue. We always know there are certain things we can’t plan for,” Meredith said. “But you don’t think your president is going to be the one making things complicated for your business.”