Jim Pat Wilson

Opinion contributor

The Republican administration has once again increased tariffs on China. Meanwhile, farmers across the commonwealth continue to struggle from trade deficits inspired by the first round of disputes. Caught in the Republican party’s political crosshairs, farmers are stuck in an environment that has cultivated fear for anyone who dares to speak against the mighty GOP.

My name is Jim Pat Wilson, and I have a lot less to lose than some of my farming friends and I want to speak up for those who fear they will be retaliated against.

As a third-generation farmer in New Concord, Kentucky, I raised dairy cows and grew tobacco from 1969 until my retirement in 2016. Farming has changed, friends. The small farmer is a dying breed while the large corporate farms continue to feed on information campaigns of fear and folly.

Grocery stores and corporate accounts are full of the fruits of our labor while farmers are frightened that at any moment a flood or political dispute could take everything. This $16 billion bailout that the president has promised comes from the chaos of his own making.

Farmers don’t want handouts, they want solutions.

The American Farm Bureau and National Farmers' Union said they appreciate the assistance for farmers, but it's a short-term solution and they would rather have a long-term trade deal with China.

And just like Mexico isn’t paying for a wall, China won’t pay for Trump’s tariffs. The funds will ultimately come from the taxpayers because it is federal money that is used for the bailouts.

Adding insult to injury, the Republican 2020 budget calls for a 15% funding drop for the Department of Agriculture. The USDA budget cuts lower subsidies for crop insurance premiums to 48% from 62% and limits subsidies for growers who make less than $500,000 annually. The 2018 Farm Bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles rant and rave about with their hemp headlines hide their continued pro-corporate policy promises.

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In Kentucky, crop insurance is absolutely critical for the survival of many Kentucky farmers, even more so for farmers in our river regions who witness increasingly erratic weather and, yes, climate change.

The Ohio River has been up and down over 36 feet since before November last year. The data pulled from the Cairo Gage from Dec. 28 to May 3 shows the river has been over 40 feet for 113 days. If you take into consideration the forecasted crest and fall, we will have had a flood stage river for over a third of the year. But crop insurance subsidies need to go?

Many farmers are seeing the results of the high water through delayed barges, closures, planting delays — all this on top of the trade wars.

Why aren’t we hearing more concern? Because the current administration has made it impossible for farmers to criticize without retaliation from Republican landowners.

A farmer who wrote an opinion piece early last year in response to farmers’ incomes dropping more than 50% since 2013 and highlighted the increase in farmer suicides due to status-quo policies, lost 300 acres of sharecropped land because word got out that he was a Democrat.

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Money lenders in agriculture base who they lend money to on more than just financial statements. Lenders make phone calls within the community to understand the “general character” of someone. The idea is to see if the farmer in question is in good standing in the community and doesn’t have anything to “hide.” But rumors spread all the time about certain operations having to file for bankruptcy.

Farmers already struggle to compete with larger farms that bring in their cloud-connected combines and quote production numbers to landowners that compete for pennies on the pound. Now they have to compete with their conscience as well.

Six economists in the USDA research branch quit the Republican administration in a single day late last month after the Economic Research Service (ERS) published findings revealed the new Republican tax law and Trump's trade disputes are hurting American farmers.

Republicans have divided neighbors, and our farmers who dare to go against the grain are siloed for speaking up; that’s why so many remain silent. Come Election Day, I hope our farmers find the confines of the ballot box a place for their own retaliation.

Jim Pat Wilson is a retired farmer from Western Kentucky. He now leases land to beef producers and grows hay for horse owners.