Putnam: Canada Tariffs and Constant Policy Changes Hurting Minnesota Farmers

(KNSI) – The state senator who chairs Minnesota’s agriculture committee says the escalating trade fight with Canada will hurt Minnesota farmers, and that the constant changes in policy are doing as much damage as the tariffs themselves.

Senator Aric Putnam of St. Cloud, spoke with KNSI as the trade dispute with Minnesota’s largest export market escalated. The United States imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods on August 22nd. Canada announced matching counter-tariffs three days later, ranging from 15% to 50% on a similar value of American products, including dairy and farm equipment. Those take effect September 8th.

Putnam says farmers can absorb a bad market. What they cannot absorb is not knowing what next week looks like. “The tariffs themselves, I think they’re problematic, but the bigger issue is that they change every week, and you can’t plan a business or run a business with that level of chaos.”

He offered an example close to home. A friend who grows soybeans had $30,000 worth of soybean seed packaged and ready to ship to South Korea when the deal was canceled amid shifting trade postures. Putnam says the farmer expects to find domestic buyers, but had to unpackage and repackage the entire order for domestic shipping, costing him an extra week of labor and additional money.

Costs are climbing at the same time. Putnam says fertilizer prices are up roughly 37%, which he says will squeeze farm viability and eventually show up in grocery store prices, along with the fuel costs of moving food to market. He says applications for farmer-lender mediation, the process producers use when they fall behind on farm debt, are running five times higher this year than last.

Central Minnesota’s dairy sector faces its own version of the problem. Putnam says high beef cattle prices have given struggling dairy operations an exit, selling off herds and going dry. But a developing trade deal for South American beef threatens to undercut the very prices that made that move attractive.

Putnam says the state is also struggling to get straight answers from Washington. He says Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen has had trouble getting the USDA to return calls. He pointed to $380,000 in federal funding for avian influenza testing in Willmar that was canceled, then reinstated. Minnesota is the nation’s top turkey producer and second in pork, and Putnam says roughly one in five jobs in the state is tied to agriculture in some way.

He says the answer is not more federal checks. “Farmers don’t want subsidies. I know people say that all the time, but they don’t. They just want an honest job and an honest opportunity to sell something that they worked on.”

Putnam says the picture is not uniformly bad. Minnesota’s emerging oat industry, including a processing plant opening in Albert Lea, could benefit if tariffs push General Mills and others away from Canadian oats. But he says rising input costs will reach those growers too, and that on balance the trade fight will cost Minnesota agriculture more than it gains.

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