Farmers remain loyal to Trump. But some are changing their minds

By Milli Legrain

Chris Gibbs, a soybean farmer, is fighting a battle against Donald Trump.

It does so from Ohio, one of the top agricultural states that brought the once real estate mogul to the White House in 2016. In announcing a $ 16 billion package in direct aid to farmers, approved by Congress, the president said in May that "the American farmer is my great friend."

But not everyone agrees.

A

 disenchanted

Gibbs, a longtime Republican who was chairman of that party in Shelby County, backed Trump four years ago, along with 62% of rural voters across the country.

But since 2018 he denounces that Trump's party has become a "populist cult" that only seeks "villains to kill them" and "does not have a plan." 

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Among the targets of the president's attacks, Gibbs cites the health and postal system, business relations, government institutions and interpersonal relationships.

So he launched a platform in favor of policies that, in his opinion, really favor rural communities and another to encourage the Republican vote in favor of the Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Although Gibbs sees himself as a

, he believes his ideas are having an echo in rural communities in other key states such as Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa or Wisconsin.

There Democrats and Republicans have similar levels of support and with each vote they can turn to one side or the other, making them essential to winning an election.

And even though Trump continues to have overwhelming support from farmers, a recent poll by agricultural journal DTN suggests that popularity could be undermining: from 89% who said they planned to vote for him in April, today that number has dropped to 71. %.

Christopher Gibbs at his home in Maplewood, Ohio Photo courtesy of Christopher Gibbs

Gibbs made a failed attempt to run for Congress as an independent, but in May this year he had to suspend his campaign due to lack of valid signatures to support his candidacy.

Today he wants to encourage others to overcome the "fear that many have of speaking out against Trump" in communities like his, fearing reprisals from their own neighbors.

He says that just a few days ago, when he had breakfast with his father at a local restaurant, an acquaintance approached his table to verbally attack him for having switched sides.

“There were four people.

Three of them were farmers.

They all wore a Trump cap, ”he said. 

"The president has made that kind of hatred fashionable," says Gibbs.

 But for this medium-sized farmer, who works about 500 acres of soybeans (a business that depends on exports to China), it was what he calls the "war on trade" that made him abandon his support for the president.

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The drop in soybean and corn prices came in 2014 due to global overproduction.

But it was in 2018 that farmers' incomes plummeted when U.S. tariffs on the Asian country prompted retaliation.  

And, although under this government, Gibbs like many others received that year about $ 20,000 to compensate for the losses, he prefers to work and sell his products at a fair price than to depend on state aid.

[These are the proposals of the presidential candidates]

“Trump always does the same.

It hurts you.

And then he gives you money to keep quiet, ”he said.

A small farmer, immigrant and democrat

Another farmer who will also vote for Biden in November is Luciano Alvarado.

This small blueberry farmer in North Carolina is part of the 5% of minority farmers such as Latinos or Blacks in the United States.

Born in Mexico, in the state of Zacatecas, he became a citizen in 1986 with the amnesty of the government of Republican Ronald Reagan.

Luciano and María Alvarado on their blueberry ranch in North Carolina Photo courtesy of the Alvarado family

And after migrating with his wife and three children across the country for more than 20 years, “following the harvest” as farm laborers, they decided to settle in North Carolina in 2004 and buy a small 32-acre piece of land in Fayetteville to grow blueberries.

His situation hardly resembles that of Chris Gibbs.

But their profession and their intention to vote unite them.

Although Alvarado thinks that his situation goes beyond who occupies the White House, in an interview with him and his two sons - César and Luciano Junior - he claims to have been discriminated against.

They tell how the doors to a government loan have been closed on numerous occasions by local officials of the Department of Agriculture (USDA, in English), even when they qualified and presented the necessary documents.

“As long as there are these opportunities for assistance and we qualify, we never get it,” Alvarado said.

“Opportunities have arisen to fulfill our dream or our ambition to be more than just bakeries, but the color of our skin stops us,” added his brother.

According to official data, 75% of farmers are small farmers, that is, they earn less than $ 50,000 a year.

But organizations that support the agricultural community such as Farm Aid and RAFI-USA denounce that many government programs are not designed for the small farmer, and less if they are minorities.

Access to them also depends on having contacts within these agencies.

So it was with aid for COVID-19.

A preliminary analysis of official data by NBC News, our chain sister, package 16.000 million dollars in aid known as the Food Assistance Program Coronavirus

or

in English

revealed that

And according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA), 80% of the funds nationwide went to the hands of three raw materials: cattle, milk and corn.

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After years of hurricanes like Matthew flooding the Alvarado family's ranch lands for weeks, the pandemic was the final straw.

His entire blueberry crop is spoiled.

Still, they say the family is closer than ever.

"As long as that dream is alive and we keep the faith and this family unit, we still have hope."

A Republican with reservations

More than a thousand miles from there, in Woodsboro, Texas, David Wyatt has been running a cotton mill for 42 years that exports its product to China through a cooperative.

Texas is the state that produces the most cotton in the country, and Wyatt is grateful for the public support received by his clients, the producers, during the pandemic.

They resort to their services for the processing and cleaning of the product.

"If the producer goes bad, it's all downhill," he warns.

David Wyatt behind the cotton mill he runs in Woodsboro, Texas, in 2019 Milli Legrain

The fear of bankruptcy for farmers like Wyatt is real.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, in 2019 bankruptcies among farmers were up 20% from the previous year, despite the record financial aid they received.

Bankruptcies hadn't skyrocketed this far in a decade.

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But there is an acknowledgment among experts that the damage would have been far worse without Congressional aid packages to alleviate the COVID-19 economic crisis.

Although he supports Trump, Wyatt rejects his anti-immigrant rhetoric as manpower is scarce in his locality.

For this reason, the business depends on a group of migrant workers with a residence, or

based in the Rio Grande Valley.

The group has been traveling to Woodsboro for 12 years from August to November to operate the machines that process the cotton.

“They are not taking anyone's job,” Wyatt insists, “Shifts are 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Local people don't want to work 84 hours a week ”.

This year when two of his local workers fell ill with coronavirus, he decided to increase his hourly pay to the migrant worker, who, on his own initiative, took over the reins of the workshop.

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Wyatt also doesn't like Trump's oversight of the coronavirus.

All its workers have access to masks for free.

“I need these people.

I have known them for years.

I have a lot of respect for them and I don't want them to get sick, ”he said.

Despite this, Wyatt will vote for Trump in November: “Republicans have always been friends with the farmer.

We all support Trump around here. "

A corn giant: always with Trump

An Iowa State University survey shows that in 2019 more than 56% of corn and soy farmers in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois continued to support Trump despite the low prices they faced from China's retaliation, confident that the situation would improve in the future. 

One of them is Ryan Buck, former president of the Minnesota Corn Farmers Association, and a large producer of corn and soybeans in the state of Minnesota.

That Midwest state that received $ 681 million in government aid in the first round of financial aid will be key to the November elections.

It is the fourth largest corn producer in the United States, with Mexico being its main buyer.

Ryan and Lauren Buck with their two children on their corn farm in Minnesota Photo courtesy of the Buck family

With more than 1,000 acres of corn, which he shares with his wife's family, bordering the Mississippi River, Buck estimates that he

waged by the current Administration.

In Goodhue County, where he

lives Buck, maize farmers received $ 60 per acre of land as part of a massive aid program of the Government known as Facilitation Program Market (Market Facilitation Program

in English) to compensate for the low cost at which they had to export their products.

For this farmer, the worst thing was the effect of COVID-19 on his business when the demand for gasoline collapsed: "Without the coronavirus, we would have a good demand for gasoline, which would help the ethanol [or corn alcohol] industry" .

But the closure of dozens of ethanol plants is also an effect of a recent decision by the current Administration to relax a rule from the era of former Democratic President Barack Obama that required gasoline to be 10% ethanol.

Still, Buck is confident that the market will improve as he says it had been beginning to do before the pandemic.

And may the new agreement that the United States signed with Mexico and Canada open doors to their products.

"I have faith in the president," he said, "no one imagined that there would be a pandemic that would shut down the country for seven months."

"Trump watches over us and keeps his word," he added.

Christopher Gibbs, the Ohio farmer, is not so clear.

And experts warn that, without a new round of help, the worst may be yet to come.

This report was made with the financial support of the