To the Editor:



I am a soybean farmer here in Cayuga County. But as of last month, I am also a casualty of President Donald Trump's misbegotten trade war.



Most people are unaware that soybeans have become a significant crop in the 24th Congressional District. Farmers in Cayuga County plant some 30,000 acres, Wayne County 12,000 to 15,000 acres, Onondaga and Oswego about half that each. For reference, we grow about twice the acres for grain corn and more still for silage corn, but soybean acres are not trivial by any means.

Now, I think growing soybeans here was originally a response to the decline of dairy farming, a way to use the excess acres and contribute to paying the school taxes. But farmers in New York have discovered that soybeans grow pretty well here, they don't cost too much to grow and, up until last week, they paid pretty good. On top of that, we have an export market here; soybeans can go by rail to the Port of New Jersey and be shipped to the world. In short, soybeans were a little ray of hope for New York farmers in an otherwise dismal situation.



It's no secret that the U.S. typically exports some 35 million metric tons of soybeans to China every year, 30 percent of our total production. Obviously, New York's contribution is small, but that doesn't make it any less important to us New York soybean producers.



That's why it has been so disconcerting this past spring to follow the Trump administration's trade policy machinations and the Chinese response. As of now, exports have fallen off so sharply that they will be down by 20 percent this year. That represents billions of dollars to farmers that can never be recovered. And moreover, this decline has been reflected in the price. In the past month alone, soybeans have lost 20 percent of their value here even as the price of Brazilian soybeans has soared. And that 20 percent decline in price isn't just on the soybeans exported but to the whole of the U.S. soybean production, in the billions of dollars.



Initial anxiety among producers has now given way into outright alarm and consternation as the price plummets. In short, this is a colossal catastrophe created by deliberate miscalculation.



That's why a couple of weeks ago, when we saw Rep. John Katko parade Vice President Mike Pence through the Auburn steel mill, local soybean farmers undoubtedly felt a profound sense of betrayal and impending doom unlike any since President Jimmy Carter invoked the Great Russian Grain Embargo 38 years ago. We full well know the economic catastrophe and the real misery it caused Midwestern grain farmers then and will cause us today.



Katko is literally celebrating a windfall for steel manufacturers even while Trump's trade policy beggars Katko's own constituents. Katko was elected with the promise to protect us from the excesses of a Clinton administration, but he certainly isn't protecting us from the misguided excesses of a Trump administration.



It's clearly time to elect someone who will.



Richard Glenister

Locke