Oklahoma Farmers Are Asking for A Soybean Bailout

You can almost feel the tension building across farm country. For decades, soybeans were a safe bet that paid the bills thanks to overseas demand, especially from China, but that demand is suddenly gone, grain bins are full, prices are low, and farmers are upset about it.

While that sucks for big ag, saying the quiet part out loud, soybeans were never grown for the USA. They've always been planted for someone else’s market, someone else’s feedlot, someone else’s table across the world. The only reason America embraces it is because it makes cheap feed and technically edible oils.

The Export Trap That Built Soybeans

Maybe this is the moment the ag industry needs to practice what they overwhelmingly preach, and focus on making crops for America again.

I get it. I came up on a farm, I know it's a wonderfully tough life where the goal is to never turn a profit on paper, but losing the soybean industry isn't the worst thing in the world. The crops are sprayed with poisons throughout the season that survive processing and refining. Those chemicals linger in the finished products that have absolutely inundated the food supply, top to bottom.

It'd tell you to look at any label in the store, but it's so ingrained in our food supply, it's not even always listed.

Remember When Farms Grew Food for Us?

If you didn't grow up in rural America, you probably don't even know that local family farms used to grow a lot more variety. This was long before the export boom. It was common to see lots of grains and dry beans planted across the plains. And while they didn’t make anyone rich, they fed the people and livestock here at home. Bringing some of those crops back could help balance out the boom/bust ag industry we have today.

Crops that work with the land instead of stripping it bare. Rye, barley, or even sorghum. They won't make the same payday per acre as soybeans, but they pay off over time by helping soil health... which lowers future input costs and boosts backend profits.

That’s a return you won’t see on any futures chart.

Better Crops for Better Soil

Another path could be food crops we actually eat. It’s strange how much black beans, chickpeas, and lentils we import when we’ve got prime legume soils and growing regions. And while black beans are slowly making a resurgence across the Midwest as a very valuable cash crop, production is low and it's also sort of a boom/bust crop too. They're just so fragile.

Local and regional food systems aren’t just trendy blue-hair buzzwords, they’re a better market insurance on the farm. When global trade slows or politics get in the way, those local supply chains that "don't make as much money" suddenly start looking a lot smarter when they're the only crops making money.

Less Money is Better Than No Money

And then there’s the hot topic of hemp. It grows fast and has a million uses... but when the oil industry already has a cheap solution for everything hemp could replace, it's a hard row to hoe. Same/same for switchgrass and other biofuel crops. They won’t make any headlines, yet...

At the end of the day, soybeans have probably had their last hurrah. They're going the way of the family beef and hog farms. They helped build this generation of modern farms, but you'd be far better off planting for America again rather than whining to Washington and begging for yet another bailout.

Hard times create strong men. As a majority of rural America voted for it, while this may all seem like a huge make-or-break ordeal, this may be the chance to literally make America great again.