Ryan Mickelson is a professional gambler. He doesn’t look like it. The solidly built 34-year-old doesn’t start his days in a Las Vegas hotel room nor does he spend his days palming a deck of cards. Instead, he gets up every day in his one-story house a few miles outside Duncombe, a small town with one bar, one church and one post office, and goes to work in the flat green fields of north central Iowa.

Farming is perhaps the most physically taxing form of gambling. Every year, farmers take out loans to pay for sowing and harvesting a crop. They have to buy the right seed, plant at the right time and harvest at the right time. All along, they bear the risk of Mother Nature ruining everything. The weather might be too hot or it might be too cold. There might be too much rain falling or not enough. With all this uncertainty inherent to the profession, there’s now another variable, Donald Trump.

The potential for a trade war between the United States and China has caused soya bean prices to fall significantly in recent weeks as both countries threaten to impose new tariffs on each other. One of China’s top targets is soya beans, a key crop for farmers in states like Iowa, which Trump relied upon in his 2016 victory, that have since fallen to their lowest prices in nearly a decade.

Mickelson, one of those farmers, was steering his pickup truck past a field dotted with puddles on Friday. A fifth-generation farmer, he was on his way to show a field where he grew soya beans. There had been four inches of rain in the past week and it was still too wet for him to attend to the weeds there. Mickelson farms with his brother and his father, mostly on rented land although his father owns a few hundred acres.

Brad Mickelson and Ryan Mickelson on Friday in Duncombe, Iowa. Photograph: Scott Morgan/The Guardian

Mickelson was worried about the current situation for farmers. “The farm economy is not good right now at all as we all know and if something don’t change, there is going to be a lot of farmers going bankrupt,” he said as steered his pickup truck down the gravel roads, throwing up a fine trail of dust behind him. “Something has to change and something’s got to change fast. Trump promised and said nothing is going to happen to us farmers but since this came out and tariffs took effect we’ve seen nothing but a dive in the markets.”

There has been much speculation about how the potential for tariffs and a trade war would affect the views of the farmers who flocked to support Trump in 2016. Not those who wore Maga hats and have fervent views about social issues, but those like Mickelson, who were not intensely partisan and simply saw the Republican as the best placed to change the status quo. “I feel like he can do something I guess, I hope,” said the Iowan. “I hope this is one little hiccup. I think things in the long run will help, fair trade is fair trade and we have to have that.”

If something don’t change, there is going to be a lot of farmers going bankrupt. Ryan Mickelson

Proposed Chinese tariffs on American goods would hit Iowa the hardest of any state according to a recent study by Moody’s Investor’s Service. Iowa exported $2bn in soya beans alone to China in 2016, making up 4% of the state’s economy.

Iowa’s agriculture sector has already been hit by a 25% tariff on pork from China that took effect in April, after Trump imposed $60bn in new duties on Chinese products in March. However, estimates show Chinese tariffs on soya beans would cost farmers in Iowa alone up to $624m, twice as much as the duties on pork. The tariffs come in retaliation to those imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese steel and aluminum. These tariffs have had their own impact on Iowa farmers with the increased cost of steel pushing up the prices of farm equipment.

Farming in Iowa in recent years has seen a boom and bust cycle. Monte Shaw, the executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and former Republican congressional candidate, told the Guardian that the years between 2006-2013 “were probably the best eight-year-run in the history of American agriculture”. However, he noted since then there had been a “downward trajectory in farm income”.



In a state still traumatized by the farm crisis of the 1980s, things aren’t that bad yet. Photograph: Scott Morgan/The Guardian

Adverse weather had added further pressure on Iowa’s farmers. Tim Gannon, the Democratic nominee for secretary of agriculture in the state noted that Iowa had a late spring and parts of the state were still getting snow into late March and early April, just as Trump took his initial steps on trade. It created what he called “double-barreled angst” about trade and about the weather at a time when farm income was already projected to be its lowest in over a decade.

But in a state still traumatized by the farm crisis of the 1980s, when a combination of low prices and high interest rates led to a collapse in the rural economy and many farmers into bankruptcy, things weren’t that bad yet.

And, for all the angst that the potential trade war has caused, some saw a silver lining. Grant Kimberley, the director of market development for the Iowa Soybean Association, that the dispute could be an opportunity to resolve a number of lingering issues with China. He noted that China had imposed barriers by not allowing the import of some varieties of soya beans genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides that had been approved elsewhere, and that China imposed more rigorous standards on soya beans imported from the United States than it did from Brazil and Argentina. “We could end up in a better place,” said Kimberley. He noted “nobody wins in a trade war” and that a situation in which Chinese consumers pay more for their food and American farmers get less for their crops would be a disaster for both countries.

Operatives in both parties were skeptical about the immediate political hit of the tariffs on the midterm elections. After all, farmers sell much of their crops in advance and take out crop insurance to hedge against these situations, but there are always limits to what they can sell. For example, in Mickelson’s case he had sold some of his crops early but noted “you don’t know what you’re actually going to have at the end of the year so you can only sell so much ahead of time”.

But, as a sign of growing unease over the possible disruption that a trade war could cause to Iowa communities all six members of Iowa’s congressional delegation, five Republicans and a lone Democrat, sent a letter to the White House on Monday. They wrote: “We remain concerned about the impacts of these retaliatory tariffs from our major trading partners on Iowa agriculture products coming to fruition. We strongly urge you to quickly resolve our trade differences and avoid a trade war.”

The economic impact of a trade war could reach far beyond the farming community. A shrinking economy would further exacerbate life in rural Iowa. Seventy-one of the state’s 99 counties have lost population since 2010. Small towns have seen businesses close and pressure on schools from shrinking populations has forced consolidation that has led to bus rides of up to 75 minutes each way for students living in rural areas.

Mickelson drives near his farm in Duncombe, Iowa. Photograph: Scott Morgan/The Guardian

Already Mickelson said he might be the only person in his high school class to still be a farmer, and he still works part-time jobs in the winter and summer to stay afloat while also starting a side business selling seed. And the economic challenges of farming were made clear when Mickelson pulled up to an equipment shed. There, in front of a giant combine, was the small red tractor that his grandfather once used to work the land. The combine was a recent purchase, bought used for $300,000. Rising equipment prices meant that it cost twice as much as its predecessor, which was the same model, in 2010.

Mickelson’s older brother Brad was even more sanguine about prospects. The 37-year-old, who was working in the equipment shed, loomed over a small red tractor owned by their grandfather. “I think Trump is right in a way. The United States is kinda getting the short end of the stick on this deal and a lot of those other countries have manipulated things and do everything in their favor and against us.”

However, the older brother thought things would work out between the US and China. “I think they will somehow, someway get stuff resolved. Too many things that we want that they have, and too many things that we have that they want.

“Is it going to be perfectly even-Steven with one another?” he asked, and shrugged. “But maybe we get a little closer. I guess you got to be an optimist. If you farm you got to be an optimist.”