Mississippi Insight for March 16, 2025: McCormick and Barbour

Now on Mississippi Insight: nothing changes with the commodity prices that we're seeing today, those bankruptcies will continue into next year. Mississippi farmers warn that they may need federal help as a widening trade war targets our agricultural products. We'll hear from Mississippi Farm Bureau's Mike McCormack. And there is no doubt in my mind that a tariff is a form of taxation — former Governor Haley Barbour offers his take on the president's tariff push, education, and much more. That's all ahead this week on Mississippi Insight. I'm Byron Brown, on broadcast and on podcast. Thank you for joining us for this March 16th edition of Insight. Each year, Mississippi farmers bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales overseas of our produce, our meat, and our egg products. It's the state's top industry. Now, despite reassurances from state politicians, some Mississippi farmers are getting very nervous indeed. President Donald Trump's foreign trade policies have drawn retaliatory tariffs by China, Canada, and the European Union, and those tariffs target many of our most lucrative agricultural exports. We wanted to get the farmer's perspective this week. Mississippi Farm Bureau President Mike McCormack sat down with 12 News' Jobe Smith on Thursday.

Well, obviously tariffs are not a friend of the farmers. We're at the tip of the spear on trade. We have to trade a lot of our ag products here in the United States overseas for our commodity markets to work the best. But we certainly understand the issue with securing the border. That's important for our membership. Stemming the tide of illegal drugs coming into the country is important, and trying to get fair trade deals are important as well. We get taken advantage of by other countries, so we're all aware that those are things that we need to work on. But in the short term, trade disruption is very painful for farmers.

Are you worried that countries like Brazil and Argentina will take over markets that Mississippi farmers rely on?

Well, I think that's already happening. Brazil is clearing a lot of their rainforest, a lot of their land to be in production agriculture, and they don't follow the same rules that we do here in the United States as far as how we go about doing that through deforestation. They can grow two crops a year where most of our farmers grow one, so it does give them a distinct advantage. And I think that some of our foreign trading partners have viewed us as unreliable, so they are looking at places like Brazil and Argentina to take that market. I do believe our farmers here in the United States can compete with those countries very well if we get the opportunity to trade on a level playing field, and that we would be able to keep those markets if we can get to some fair trade deals.

With rising costs and lower prices, are federal aid programs enough to keep farmers afloat, and what more is needed?

Well, I think first of all, if there is any aid coming from the government to help offset some of the pain that the farmers are going to see at the farm gate, we would be very appreciative of that. Farmers don't like to live on government subsidies. That's not what we want to do. We want to have fair and equal and open trade and to be able to make a living off of our farm with fair prices. We have seen a reduction in prices for the commodities that we've been getting since the trade wars of the first Trump administration, and then we've been hit with the inflation of the inputs that we've had to purchase through the last four years. So overall, it's sort of been a perfect storm of less markets for our commodities to go to and then much higher prices that we're seeing for the input costs have just really put farmers at a disadvantage. We've probably had 10 or 15 years of good prices where farmers had some money and some carryover that they were able to weather some storms, but right now it's all gone and the farmers are eating into their equity pretty hard. We are seeing some spikes in bankruptcies. If nothing changes with the commodity prices that we're seeing today, those bankruptcies will continue into next year. Very disheartened to hear a lot of our longtime farmers talking about hanging it up either this year or next year and not trying to fight this and lose what they've made in their career. So I think to get farmers the farm loans that they're going to need to farm on next year, there will more than likely have to be some type of payments coming in from USDA just to encourage the bankers to see a bottom line that they're willing to extend some credit to the farmers going into next year. So without change, I think we'll have to see something from USDA, and I'm encouraged listening to our new secretary. I think she's very aware of how we navigate through all of these challenging times, and they're very aware that they're going to have to step up to the plate and do something if things stay out of the farmers' control and what they do on their farm. I think USDA will have to step in and help.

You mention USDA, and with the USDA budget cuts, the recent budget cuts, especially to the food banks and school meal programs, how could that again impact Mississippi farmers?

Well, you don't want to see any cuts, but we certainly understand that the government can't afford to do all programs that we're doing right now. So I'll have to leave that up to the people in Washington that are looking at the holistic picture to make sure that they can make budgets work. I will say more importantly to us, the cuts to USDA staff — FSA, Farm Service Agency, in particular — is an agency that's really lean right now here in the state. So if there are any cuts to staffing, I think that it needs to happen at the federal level because we're already pretty low on the amount of people we need here in the state of Mississippi.

Tariffs have raised prices on farm essentials like fertilizer. How are farmers handling those extra costs?

Well, they just have to eat them, because farmers don't get a chance to decide what their input costs are, and they don't get to decide what we're selling our commodities for. So any raises in the things, the input costs that we have on the farm, the farmer just has to work that into their budget. I do know that I had a meeting with Secretary Brooke Rollins, our agricultural secretary, this last week, and she was going to the White House to talk to them about how tariffs would impact fertilizer prices on farmers that were beginning to get in the fields and getting that out. So we're hopeful that the administration understands that 80% of some of our key ingredients of fertilizer comes from Canada, that that would be taken into account, and we can get more focused on tariffs that may work on the things that he wants to work on instead of just a broad range of products that might hurt our farmers. Changing what they grow or looking for new markets to deal with trade uncertainty — I think absolutely the farmers will change their crop rotations. Right now it looks like soybeans are in the crosshair, cotton is in the crosshair, those are the two that we trade the most to China. They have probably the biggest risk on it looks like right now. Corn may be the better option for them to possibly break even or make a little money on. So I think in the state of Mississippi you'll see a great deal of our acres go in on corn.