Tariffs already affecting farmers

Uncertainty created by the administration’s across-the-board tariffs may affect the prices consumers pay exponentially, according to Black Dirt Region vegetable farmer Chris Pawelski, whose family has been harvesting onions and other vegetables in the Warwick area for generations.

But it’s also the impact of Project 2025 whose new recommendations are being promulgated via executive orders that is creating chaos for the farmer.

“Smaller farms like ours could soon pay more for farm equipment and materials because of 10 percent and more across the board tariffs on goods imported from 60 countries,” Pawelsk said.

He doesn’t know how his squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are going to do this year, and some farmers are even planning for losses on crops they just planted.

’Worst case scenario’

China’s new retaliatory tariffs of 34 percent on all American goods could wreak havoc on local farms because many of them depend on Chinese consumers.

“It could turn out at the very end that if the export market has evaporated and you have to eat it – or dump it – that’s the worst case catastrophic scenario.”

Meanwhile, however, The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would negatively impact the federal nutrition programs as well as other critical federal anti-poverty, education and health programs. The policy proposals would also weaken federal offices, departments, and regulatory agencies involved in agriculture.

According to the Food Research and Action Center, the document “advocates narrowing the scope of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) role, cutting references to ‘equity’ and ‘climate smart’ in USDA’s mission statement, separating agricultural provisions from nutritional provisions in the Farm Bill. History suggests that the reason that the nutrition title was originally put in the farm bill with the collaboration of Senators Bob Dole and George McGovern back in the 70s was by combining those two together it guaranteed the passage every year of the annual wage appropriations bills and then the five-year farm bill. The farm state legislators, senators and members of the house would vote for the farm programs and then all the urban legislators would vote for it without it being a stand-alone ingredient.

The import of the impacts

The proposed changes to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the creation of the Farm Bill would accelerate what the Reagan Administration attempted in the 80s, placing a more stringent means test for participating in programs aimed at preventing food insecurity, and reducing a state’s decision making:

Increase work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents.

Eliminate categorical eligibility Roll back the updates to the Thrifty Food Plan that modernized the SNAP benefits.

Eliminate the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Weakening regulations on baby formula.

Prohibiting schools from grouping together to utilize the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP).

Working with Congress to ultimately eliminate CEP.

Providing summer meals only to children enrolled in summer school classes.

Rejecting efforts to establish Healthy School Meals for All policies nationwide and in states.

But the tariffs could have a detrimental impact upon local farms as well. Consider northwest farms in the U.S., for example, who need exports to foreign markets. They need to rely on specific markets in Asia, and they have been able to rely upon those markets for decades.

“But the thing is,” Pawelski said, “if they lose those export markets they either have to dump that produce (because they can’t eat all of it) or they have to come here in the New York market, and so you’re potentially facing markets here that are going to be flooded with cheap western exports. So we could potentially see a total price collapse in several categories of produce.”

‘The problem we face now’

At Scheuermann Farms, Sally Scheuermann said that tariffs had not affected their current inventory of seedlings, containers and soils because they had already placed their order last year.

“The problem we face now,” she said, “is that suppliers are raising their prices on existing inventory that had not yet been affected by tariffs, similar to what we faced during COVID when everybody blamed the pandemic as having caused a rise in their prices.

“We don’t know what we will face for next year’s orders,” she continued, “but we’ll just have to wait and see. One of our smaller Canadian suppliers has already notified us that their prices will rise by 10 percent.”

The changes being introduced by the administration are happening so rapidly, however, that both constituents and legislators are having difficulty reacting quickly enough. And the courts are facing their own set of challenges as submissions are also increasing.

Local farmers are being cautious about what they will plant, how much they will plant and when they will plant.