Farmers who cheered tariffs a few years ago are now staring at bins full of soybeans they can’t profitably sell.
That’s the through line in three striking accounts: commentator David Pakman’s overview of farm-country discontent, Illinois grower John Bartman’s first-hand struggle to keep a fifth-generation operation afloat, and farmer Sarah Taber’s blunt explanation of why many in agriculture backed policies they knew could hurt them.
Individually, their stories sting. Together, they read like a cautionary tale about promises, price shocks, and political gravity.
From “I Love The Farmers” To “We Can’t Make This Pencil”
On his show, David Pakman highlights a wave of Republican soybean farmers who say tariffs and the ensuing trade war have battered their livelihoods. He plays clips of Illinois producers describing empty order books from China and a yawning price gap with Brazil.
One farmer in Pakman’s segment cuts to the chase: Chinese buyers “should have been buying our beans already,” but it’s “crickets.”
Another says retaliatory tariffs leave U.S. soy at a roughly 20% disadvantage versus Brazilian supply, and buyers are simply going elsewhere. That’s not ideology – it’s arithmetic, as Pakman puts it.
Then there’s Grant Senac, an Illinois farmer who said he’s likely to harvest a record soybean crop and still “not get hardly anything for it.”
It’s hard to hear a producer celebrate yields in one breath and lament prices in the next. Senac doesn’t want a bailout; he wants a market. That’s the farmer’s creed in one sentence.
Markets punish uncertainty. If you rip up long-standing trade channels, importers don’t “crawl back” – they diversify. Once those relationships are built, they don’t unwind quickly, even if policy moods shift. Pakman’s point is that this was predictable – and predicted by the people now paying the bill.
A Fifth-Generation Farm Asks: “Why Blow Up What Worked?”
John Bartman, the fifth-generation operator of Bartman Family Farm in Marengo, Illinois, narrates the human side of those numbers. In the Democratic Party’s video, Bartman walks through harvest while describing what tariffs have done to cash flow, equipment purchases, and the rural economy that depends on them.
Harvest, he says, should be “the best time of the year.” Instead, it’s “bitter,” because soybean dollars that once supported Illinois communities are now spent in Argentina and Brazil.
Bartman ties farm income to the broader Midwest: when farmers earn, they buy combines and tractors built in Rust Belt towns, tip better at diners, and fund local schools through higher taxable activity. When they don’t, everything tightens.
His frustration isn’t subtle. “It’s total bulls**t,” Bartman says of the policy whiplash. He credits the Obama administration – and later President Biden’s push on advanced biofuels – for giving agriculture a lift.
Then he contrasts that with the tariff era, which he says “tanked” the ag economy, killed export markets, and left producers with “no income” and “no reason” for the pain. Like Senac, he rejects bailouts as “band-aids.” Farmers want durable demand, not one-off checks.
Here’s where I add a caveat: commodity cycles are volatile even in calm policy waters. Weather, currency swings, logistics – any one can rattle prices. But when a key customer like China steps back because policy deliberately raised your price, that’s a man-made headwind.
Bartman’s underlying plea – don’t sabotage export markets that took decades to build – feels basic and right.
The Hardest Take: “We Weren’t Lied To”
If Pakman and Bartman map the pain, Sarah Taber supplies the painful context. In her Farm to Taber video, Taber says flatly that ag country knew a trade war was coming – and voted for it anyway.
“I can’t recall anybody who actually thought Trump wasn’t going to start a trade war,” Taber says. He campaigned on it, did it once, and promised to do it again.
When she put the obvious question to a farm lobbyist – why back a policy that would “hurt your businesses”? – the answer, she recalls, was pragmatic: there are “risks,” but also “benefits.”
Taber lists those expected benefits as she sees them: past bailouts that cushioned losses; tax cuts that many asset-rich farm families value; looser environmental rules; and an easier path to cheap labor through programs like H-2A, which she notes have been exploited by some employers.
In her view, many farmers assumed they’d get the upside (cash, breaks, flexibility) and be made whole if exports collapsed.
This time, she argues, the safety net hasn’t appeared at the same scale – and, politically, second-term incentives to hand out relief are weaker.
That’s her analysis, and whether you agree with every element, it’s a cold shower for the “we were lied to” narrative. Taber’s bigger point is cultural: the farm sector isn’t a monolith of struggling yeomanry.
Land and equipment are expensive; a lot of families in production agriculture are, on paper, wealthy. That shapes policy preferences, including a strong appetite for tax relief even if it collides with export-driven business reality.
Taber’s honesty will rub some readers the wrong way. But it answers a question many outside ag ask in whispers – why support a strategy that kneecaps your top customers? Her answer: because people weighed all the other policy goodies and thought the government would paper over the trade damage again.
China Pivoted. Brazil Filled The Gap. The World Kept Turning.
The supply chain rearrangement Pakman describes is already visible on the ground, Bartman feels it in his balance sheet, and Taber treats it as the foreseeable result of a conscious gamble.
All three converge on the same outcome: China rerouted demand to Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere. Once those pipes were laid, they didn’t disappear just because U.S. prices looked friendlier later.
For farmers, time is money. You only get so many harvests to service debt, upgrade machinery, and keep the family business viable. A two- or three-year diversion of a top buyer can be the difference between expansion and auction-block.
That’s why farmers like Senac bristle at the idea of “bailing out” a crop they grew on spec for a market that used to exist – and could have continued to exist but for tariffs. As he told Pakman, he wants to be “paid off the job and the quality,” not a transfer payment after the fact.
Policy-wise, I’ll add this: reshoring, leverage, and “toughness” make for great stump lines. But commodities aren’t widgets, and trading partners aren’t captive.
If you weaponize access, they will too. The question isn’t whether to have leverage – it’s whether you understand the cost of using it and have a plan farmers can survive while you do.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Pakman’s farmers want their customers back. Bartman wants a coherent ag policy anchored in strong exports, not temporary checks. Taber wants the industry – and the public – to level with itself about the choices that were made and who they benefited.
I think there’s a practical path that borrows from all three:
Short term, stop the bleeding. De-escalate tariff fights that directly hobble farm exports. Precision beats blunderbuss; target unfair practices with tools that don’t boomerang on the Midwest.
Medium term, rebuild trust with buyers. That means predictable policy, not swing-for-the-fences shocks every election cycle. Long-term contracts, infrastructure that cuts ship-to-port friction, and vigorous trade diplomacy should be boring – and relentless.
Long term, diversify profit engines. Bartman’s enthusiasm for biofuels underscores how policy can widen demand beyond a single foreign buyer. That doesn’t replace exports – but it can cushion them.
And culturally, accept Taber’s challenge: no more pretending. Agriculture is both business and heritage. It deserves respect – and sober math. If a coalition offers short-term checks in exchange for long-term markets, don’t be surprised when the math turns red.
Farmers didn’t suddenly get bad at farming. They got caught between campaign theater and commodity reality.
The next time a politician says tariffs will make America “win” again, the only fair response from farm country is the same one it gives a seed salesman: show me how this pencils out.
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Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
