WASHINGTON — It’s a bad year for a good soybean harvest as tariffs decimate export orders. Minnesota farmers were in the nation’s capital this week pleading for a bailout.

Historically, Minnesota sends two out of every three rows of soybeans overseas, typically to feed livestock. China has often bought the bulk of those exports.

As of early September, Chinese buyers have yet to book any shipments of American soybeans from the upcoming harvest. That’s a far cry from the 12 million to 13 million tons they’d booked by this time last year, traders told Reuters this week.

For Gail Donkers, who farms in the rolling hills between Faribault and Kenyon in southern Minnesota, it hurts to see plentiful four-bean pods growing waist-high on her Rice County property — a sign of a robust season.

Without solid customers, she has held off selling her beans, hoping to avoid a loss. Donkers, chair of the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council, flew to Washington this week to meet with Minnesota’s congressional delegation.

Because of the trade war with China, U.S. soybeans cost about 20% more than South American beans. That’s due to trade duties imposed by the Chinese government in response to President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on goods bound for the U.S. market.

China is buying cheaper Brazilian soybeans, dragging down prices for American soy farmers.

“Brazil can fill almost all of China’s needs — that leaves all of us American producers sitting here holding the bag,” said Dennis Fultz, a farmer in southwestern Minnesota’s Lyon County.

In 2016, China bought more than 40% of its soybeans from U.S. farmers. As of last year, that had dropped to about 20%, customs data shows.

Earlier this week, Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and the House agriculture committee chair, told Agri-Pulse Newsmakers that he could see a future Farm Bill repurposing tariff revenue for farm aid.

“I’m advocating that, just a fraction of that money would be invested ... in our farmers,” Thompson said.

During the first Trump administration’s trade war with China, farmers received $23 billion in cash bailout payments in 2018 and 2019.

From the basement of a hotel on Capitol Hill, Donkers said Wednesday she’s wondering exactly when Washington will offer aid, since the current market drop is due to the tariff war.

“We have to have something,” she said. “We never want to take a payout. But we’ve been working for 40 to 50 years to build these relationships across oceans.”

The futures price on soybeans, Minnesota’s single biggest ag export, sits just over $9 a bushel now — down from highs closer to $15 at the beginning of the decade.

Across the Upper Midwest, early-season anxiety has given way to panic, especially as median farm income is expected to be in the red across the board this year.

“It’s a pretty dire situation,” said Darin Johnson, president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. “We’re in a tough spot.”

Johnson farms corn and soybean near Wells in south central Minnesota. Like other farmers, he’s “sitting on a fair amount of soybeans” that in past years would be headed on railcars toward the Pacific Northwest, and then Asia.

The China-sized hole in American farm exports’ balance sheet means farmers like Johnson will need bins to store beans until prices improve. But there is only so much space to store grain for long periods, and an ample corn harvest is also on the horizon.

Johnson said he has faith that the Trump administration is working on trade deals in the background.

But Johnson said farmers are hoping for some signal from the federal government to calm their anxieties.

“I think we’re at the stage — if we don’t have any trade deals that are officially signed in the very near future — yes, we’re going to need some aid of some sort,” Johnson said.

A Department of Agriculture spokesperson in an email did not address the current situation but blasted the Biden administration for handing off a $50 billion agricultural trade deficit. America ran a trade surplus for decades until 2019, during Trump’s first administration.

The spokesperson said the agency is refocusing its efforts on farmers, pointing to $10 billion in emergency aid to crop farmers at the beginning of the season to help finance this year’s planting, based on results in 2024.

Thom Petersen, Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner, said state officials are also pushing for “some sort of payment” from the federal government to help soybean farmers.

He worries this year’s tough market, after several down years for farmers, could lead to painful consolidation.

“Some farmers are really struggling,” he said, recalling a recent conversation he had with a farmer who couldn’t afford fuel for his combine tractor.

Even with tariff clouds hovering in early 2025, Minnesota farmers planted 7 million acres of soybeans, down about 400,000 acres from the year before. Only corn, at 8.6 million acres, covers more of the state’s farmland each year.

Soybeans earned Minnesota more than $3.2 billion in agricultural sales in 2024, according to the Department of Agriculture.

This year, with plentiful rains and just-right temperatures across the state this summer, USDA rated 75% of Minnesota’s soybean crop as either good or excellent as of early September.

But a key indicator of hard times for farmers came this week via Inver Grove Heights-based CHS. The nation’s largest ag cooperative is reducing profit sharing to its lowest level in recent years as a result of low commodity prices and tight profit margins.

And farmers in Minnesota say they’re hurting, said Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House ag committee.

”Every single day of the week, I have corn and soybean farmers in my committee office saying [tariffs are] killing us," Craig said. “It is incumbent upon this administration to look for new domestic markets for our farmers if they’re going to destroy our export markets.”

Rep. Brad Finstad, the Republican who represents a swath of southern Minnesota, did not return calls for comment.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the ranking Democrat on the Senate ag committee, said in a statement, “Our farmers have spent generations building these export markets, only to have them closed off by haphazard tariffs.”

There is talk on Capitol Hill that another aid package for farmers is in the works — but it’s unclear whether that would come from Congress or the administration.

In the meantime, the state is trying to sell Minnesota soybeans to other places in Asia, including developing countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and the Philippines.

“Being creative is going to have to be what farmers do at the moment,” Petersen said.

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