"Too many American farmers are unhappy, and as the dispute persists, more people are confused about the future." A former congressman from Iowa wrote this at the beginning of his letter to the China media "Shanghai Daily".
On June 17th, Shanghai Daily published an in-depth English report by Xinhua News Agency, entitled "Floods and US-China Trade Disputes Bring Disastrous Disastrous by Historical Floods". The article objectively reflects natural disasters and trade disputes, especially the disasters brought by the latter to American farmers. The article mentioned that since the end of March this year, the continuous floods in the midwest of the United States have made local farmers complain. Blake Hurst, president of Missouri Farmers’ Association, said that such a large-scale serious flood that swept across the central and western regions had never happened in his memory of farming for more than 40 years. In addition to natural disasters, the trade dispute with China provoked by the US government has further aggravated the plight of farmers in the Midwest of the United States. Trade disputes have caused a sharp decline in US soybean exports to China, lower soybean prices, greatly reduced farmers’ income, and many farmers are facing economic difficulties. Although the U.S. government launched a subsidy assistance program of $12 billion last year and $16 billion this year, the affected farmers told reporters that they wanted a stable market more than subsidies.
Shortly after the article was published, Shanghai Daily received a letter from Greg Cusack, a former representative of Iowa. Kusak said in his letter: "Too many American farmers are unhappy, and as the dispute persists, more people are confused about the future."
Kusak pointed out that because "Republicans are used to making a fuss about a single political issue, throwing salt at the wound and the rural areas where the Democratic Party depends on are dying day by day", American farmers feel quite helpless and have no choice. The Democratic Party is far from finding a package solution for agriculture or rural areas, which makes the situation even worse.
Kusak also said in his letter that Xinhua News Agency and other related articles published by Shanghai Daily reported on American farmers and other issues extensively and were in line with the facts. In contrast, some American media reports on domestic and foreign news in the United States are very lacking, which is far from meeting the needs of even readers with general knowledge background.
In his letter, he also described various manifestations of the increasingly divided American society, and pointed out: "I think the Shanghai Daily is very extensive in reporting these topics of concern, and I hope your newspaper will continue to report these problems in the United States, despite the current trade friction between the United States and China. These problems show that American society is in a dilemma. They include: high student debt (which is also high after graduation), stagnant wages, widening wealth gap and rural difficulties. "
This is not the first time that Kusak has written to Shanghai Daily. Wang Yong, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai Daily, told The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) that after reading the in-depth comments on Shanghai’s construction of beautiful countryside published by Shanghai Daily, Kusak wrote a special letter praising China’s great efforts to revitalize the countryside under the leadership of the Supreme Leader General Secretary, and pointed out that the support of the two parties in the United States to the countryside was lip service, which led to the decline of American agriculture and rural life. His letter was also published in the commentary section of Shanghai Daily.
Kusak was a representative of Iowa, and one of his main tasks was to revitalize rural areas and agriculture in the United States.
Wang Yong told The Paper that Kusak has repeatedly supported China’s just position on major issues, such as the South China Sea issue and Internet management, and he has written to actively support China’s position. He also studied the history and traditional culture of China at his own expense. Two years ago, he also facilitated a senior commentator of the Des Moines Chronicle in Iowa to come to Shanghai to interview the Shanghai Daily, affirming China’s news reporting concept. After returning to the United States, the reporter from Des Moines Chronicle wrote an in-depth report on the media, hoping that the United States would stop being biased against the China media.
"Kusak has been writing to tell us that the American press is not only the Wall Street press, but also an agricultural state like Iowa. The press is friendly to China, and the report is objective and rational. He hopes that Iowa will make greater contributions to Sino-US friendly cooperation. " Wang Yong said.
The report published in Shanghai Daily and the letter from Greg Cusack are as follows.：
Midwest farmers devastated by historic floods, ongoing US-China trade tensions
(Shanghai Daily, June 17))
About 10 days after the latest round of rainfall, half of Tom Waters’ farmland is still under water. “Some of it’ s flooded from the river. Some of it’ s flooded from seep water. Some of it just rain water that has nowhere else to go because it won’ t drain,” said the seventh-generation farmer.
Waters and his family farm about 3,500 acres (1,416 hectares) of land in Orrick, Missouri, a small town east of Kansas City. Among his nearly 1, 700-acre rain-soaked fields, 900 acres were swallowed by the surging Missouri River when a levee broke on June 1 and are still up to 4.5 meters below water.
He had planted a few acres of corn, with the rest intended for soybeans, but “it’ s just gone now,” Waters told Xinhua, estimating the loss to be “several hundred thousand dollars.”
When the flood hit, Waters had to move out some 60,000 bushels (1,633 tons) of soybeans in storage, and sold them at “a pretty low price, ” about US$3 a bushel off the normal price prior to the US-China trade tensions. “That’ s a lot of dollars difference for us,” he said.
“This has just been rain after rain. Before it even dries out it rains again. It’ s been week after week after week like that,” said Waters, who has been farming for over 40 years in this area, adding that the persistent wet weather is a “very rare event.”
Noting that reservoirs up in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota still have too much water to dump, the seasoned farmer worried that “the river is going to be high all the rest of spring and through summer, so chances are we won’ t get any of this (flooded land) planted this year.”
Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, also a corn and soybean farmer in Tarkio, northwest Missouri, told Xinhua that he saw similarly catastrophic floods in this area in 1993, but such a widespread severe flooding throughout the Midwest is the worst he can remember. “The last 12 months, in the center part of the United States, have been the wettest 12 months on record,” said Hurst, who has about 500 acres of land under water, noting that the relentless rain since late March has contributed to significant planting delays.
In the biggest corn-producing states, farmers had planted 83 percent of corn acreage by June 9, compared with a five-year average of 99 percent, according to the latest data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Hurst, who also has 40-plus years of farming experience, said corn should ideally be planted by the first week of May, and a one-month delay could cut the normal yield by roughly 20 percent, as there might not be enough time for it to mature before the frost hits the ground. The seemingly relentless rain in the Midwest has left farmers dro wning in frustration. On top of that, many growers have been bearing the brunt of the US-initiated trade dispute with China, struggling with financial hardship and facing an uncertain future.
“We’ ve seen a big cut in our (soybean) exports to China because of the trade tension, and that’ s caused prices to drop,” Hurst said, adding that several months of trade frictions have “made a big difference” to farmers’ income.
Noting that the United States has had five years of above average crop yields, Hurst said that already led to an oversupply. A decline in exports to China, caused by the trade tensions and compounded by the African swine fever outbreak, has worsened the situation, he said.
‘ Not a dependable supplier’
“It’ s just a combination of all of them that has really made farming kind of difficult this year,” Hurst said. “It just keeps on and coming.”
For Waters, a combination of circumstances has made planning nearly impossible. “I think this has been the hardest year to make decisions for me since I’ ve been farming,” he said.
Waters said it has been stressful to wait for a resolution to the trade dispute. “You keep thinking, well maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, then you hear a little bit of good news and maybe the price bumps up a little bit and then that blows up and it goes back down. So it’ s just been difficult,” he said. Hurst, who farms 6,000 acres of land with his family, usually plants corns on half of the acreage and soybeans on the other half. Earlier this year, he had planned to plant 5 to 10 percent more corn because of the trade dispute and lower demand for soybeans. The unusual wet spring, however, makes that goal unfeasible.
“Now, anybody that’ s shifting will shift to soybean simply because it’ s too late for corn,” Hurst said, adding that if soybeans don’ t get planted by this week, farmers will start to lose yield as well.
However, the USDA data shows that growers in the major soybean-producing states had only planted 60 percent of acreage by June 9, far below a five-year average of 88 percent. Speaking of the newly approved disaster relief bill and the new round of trade aid package, Hurst urged the administration to announce detailed rules of these programs quickly so that farmers can better plan.
Noting that it took Congress months to pass the disaster relief bill, Waters said he doesn’ t expect to receive any money until weeks later. Still, he prefers a stable market rather than a trade aid package. “The question has to be, are we losing these markets permanently?” Hurst said, noting that trade tensions in some ways make the United States “not a dependable supplier” for soybeans.
“Obviously we’ re going to put tariffs on you. We’ re going to announce tariffs in a tweet. So they can happen at any time. So if I’ m a grain buyer anywhere in the world, I’ m looking for a supplier I can trust, and we’ re no longer that supplier,” he said. “We’ ll be paying for this for years.”
The authors are Xinhua writers.
Media role in informing US farmers
Letter from Gray Kusak, published in Shanghai Daily on June 21st.
I wrote this after reading “Midwest farmers devastated by historic floods, ongoing US-China trade tensions” in the Shanghai Daily (June 17). One heck of a lot of farmers in America are not happy, and an even greater number are very worried about how this will all play out, especially the longer the stand-off continues.
The age of the average farmer continues to increase, the prices they receive for their crops are stagnant, the costs of the inputs nonetheless are increasing, and corporate mono-crop “farming” is harming land, air, and water (the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than ever).
So, are they just stupid, misinformed, or what?
I think the problem is really the vast division in our country caused by the culture wars — the real, but deliberately exaggerated, tensions between generations, the urban-rural divide, the skillful way the Republicans keep single-issue politics picked raw, and the marked decline in rural districts that are Democratic leaning. In a sense, many farmers thus believe that they have nowhere else to go.
The Democratic candidates have yet to produce, at least to my knowledge, anything that could remotely be described as a farm or rural program package, making the situation even more dire.
I think the wide range of concerns covered by the Shanghai Daily is truly remarkable, and I hope that despite current tensions you will continue to cover matters in the US, including the many indicators that we are a society in deep trouble: such as levels of student debt after graduation, still largely stagnant wages, the ongoing widening disparity of wealth and the genuine plight of rural America. In contrast, newspapers in the US are not doing so well. The Oregonian, the newspaper published in Portland and its metro area of a few million, is nothing like what it was in the recent past.
They now deliver paper editions to subscribers only four days a week, expecting that on other days people will use their digital apps to access them. And their national, let alone international, coverage is insufficient to provide the information even half-informed citizens need.
The author is a retired US statesman. He now lives in Oregon.
The Chinese version of the report published in Shanghai Daily and the article written by Greg Cusack are as follows:
Close-up: The spring sowing season with floods and trade disputes has brought too many difficulties to American farmers.
(Xinhua News Agency, June 14, 2019)
Xinhua News Agency, Auric, USA, June 13th (Reporter Xiong Maoling, Hu Yousong) In Auric, a small town in central Missouri, USA, Tom Waters, who was over 60 years old, pointed to a muddy water area and told Xinhua News Agency that there were nearly 1,000 acres (1 acre is about 0.4 hectares) of his farmland here, but it was a pity that it was flooded after the Missouri River burst its banks earlier this month.
The Waters family has been farming for seven generations. At present, they have more than 3,500 acres of farmland, mainly growing soybeans and corn, but half of the farmland has been affected. He said that due to the large amount of water storage in reservoirs in Montana and North Dakota in the upper reaches, it is necessary to open floodgates and flood discharge, and it is estimated that his flooded farmland will not be seen again until the end of the summer.
"(The flooded farmland) may not be able to grow anything this year." Waters said helplessly that he expected that the flood would cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Since the end of March this year, the continuous floods in the midwest of the United States have made farmers like Waters complain, and the sowing process has been delayed again and again. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture, as of last week, about 83% of corn fields in the United States have been sown, which lags behind the average of 99% in the same period of the past five years; The soybean planting completion rate is 60%, which is also lower than the average level of 88% in the same period of the past five years.
Blake Hurst, president of Missouri Farmers’ Association, told reporters that such a large-scale serious flood that swept across the central and western regions had never happened in his memory of farming for more than 40 years. He said that even if the flood recedes, the flooded farmland will have to wait for time for the soil to recover, which means that some farmland will miss the whole sowing season.
Hearst said that the best sowing date of corn has passed one month. If we start planting corn now, I am afraid we can only achieve 80% harvest this year. The sowing window of soybeans is also narrowing. If the sowing cannot be completed next week, the soybean output will be affected this year.
Not only is it a natural disaster, but the trade dispute with China provoked by the US government has aggravated the plight of farmers in the Midwest of the United States. Hearst said that the trade dispute caused a sharp drop in US soybean exports to China, lower soybean prices, greatly reduced farmers’ income, and many farmers faced economic difficulties.
Hearst said that in the past five years, the rare continuous high yield of soybeans and other crops in the United States has already caused an oversupply, while the economic and trade friction has reduced the demand for American soybeans in China, a big market, and the oversupply of American soybeans is even more serious. "These factors are superimposed together, making it difficult for farmers this year."
Waters originally hoarded 60,000 bushels of soybeans (1 bushel of soybeans weighs about 27.2 kilograms) for sale when the price picked up. However, due to the flood this spring, he had to transfer his inventory in time and have a sale at a low price. Compared with the soybean price before the Sino-US economic and trade friction, he lost about $180,000.
Compared with many farmers, Waters is lucky. It is understood that in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and other States, floods not only flooded fields, but also swept some barns, and farmers could only watch helplessly as the food that was too late to rush was wiped out.
Waters admits that this year is the most difficult year for him to make a decision since he was a farmer, and he has spent many "sleepless nights". He has been expecting the United States and China to reach an agreement as soon as possible to resolve the trade dispute, but the waiting process makes him anxious.
"I’ve been thinking about it, maybe tomorrow (an agreement will be reached), and then I heard a little good news, and then the price of soybeans went up a little, and then the expectations failed and the price fell again. This is not easy for all farmers." He said.
For Hurst, who owns 6,000 acres of farmland, the planting season this spring is also very difficult. Hearst’s farmland is located in Tacchio, a small town in the northwest corner of Missouri. In previous years, he usually planted half soybeans and half corn. Hearst originally planned to plant hundreds of acres of corn this year because of the reduced demand for soybeans caused by economic and trade frictions. However, the continuous rainfall has repeatedly delayed his corn sowing plan and missed the best sowing date. Now, if he replants soybeans, he will face the uncertainty of market demand.
In order to make up for the losses caused by economic and trade frictions to farmers, the US government introduced an agricultural subsidy plan of about $12 billion last year to provide certain subsidies to farmers of crops such as soybeans. But Waters said that the soybeans he produced last year were only partially subsidized.
In late May this year, the US Department of Agriculture announced that it would provide farmers with up to $16 billion in aid to compensate them for the losses they suffered in economic and trade frictions. But Waters doesn’t expect to get money soon. He wants a stable market more than government subsidies.
Hearst also expressed concern about the market prospects. He said that the U.S. government’s actions of arbitrarily imposing tariffs and provoking trade disputes will make the United States lose its status as a "reliable supplier" and cause long-term negative effects. "We will pay the price for this for many years." (Participating in reporters: Gao Pan, Liu Jie)
Letter from Gray Kusak.(Chinese translation)
After reading the article published in Shanghai Daily on June 17th ("Floods and trade disputes bring disasters to farmers in the Midwest of the United States"), I started writing to your newspaper. Too many American farmers are unhappy, and as the dispute persists, more people are confused about the future.
The average age of American farmers is getting bigger and bigger, the production cost is getting higher and higher, but the price of agricultural products is stagnant, and the company’s single-variety planting behavior has brought harm to land, air and water (the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is increasing day by day. )
Is all this because American farmers are stupid? Or is it because their information is wrong, or other reasons?
In my opinion, the real root of the problem lies in the social gap caused by the cultural war in our country – Generational conflicts (real but deliberately exaggerated), urban-rural division, Republicans’ habit of making a fuss about a single political issue, throwing salt into the wound, and the rural areas on which the Democratic Party depends are dying. It can be said that many farmers in the United States feel quite helpless and feel that there is no way to go. The Democratic Party is far from finding a package solution for agriculture or rural areas, which makes the situation even worse.
I think Shanghai Daily has a wide coverage of these topics of concern. I hope your newspaper will continue to report these problems in the United States, despite the current trade friction between the United States and China. These problems show that American society is in a dilemma. They include: the debt of students remains high (even after graduation), the wages are mostly stagnant, the wealth gap is widening, and the countryside is in trouble.
Contrary to your newspaper, American newspapers are not doing well. For example, The Oregonian, published in Oregon and surrounding areas with millions of people, is not as good as it used to be. The quality edition of the newspaper is only published four days a week, and the rest of the time readers are expected to read it through electronic applications. (In the case of such a shrinking newspaper industry), not to mention international news, even domestic news in the United States is poorly reported, which is far from meeting the needs of readers with only general knowledge background.
Gray Kusak
