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Reuters: ‘We need it now’: U.S. Farm Country Pins Hopes on China Trade Deal

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Trade

Anna Burkholder

Communications Associate

photo credit: Arkansas Farm Bureau, used with permission.

Reuters quoted North Carolina farmer Lorenda Overman, a member of AFBF’s Grassroots Outreach (GO) Team and the AFB Women’s Leadership Committee, in an article about how farmers are coping with the U.S. trade war with China that has tanked prices for farm goods. “We need some stability, we need some action and we need it now,” Overman told Reuters. “Her desperation reflects the mounting urgency across U.S. farm country over ongoing talks aimed at ending Washington’s trade dispute with China and pulling the U.S. agriculture industry out of its worst crisis since the 1980s,” noted Reuters. Reuters also quoted two other members of the GO Team: Kansas farmer Derek Sawyer (“If we get a trade deal done and soybeans are worth 20 percent more over the next six months, but we decided to plant all corn because we didn’t know – that’s something that worries a lot of people.”) and Chris Pollack, a Wisconsin dairy farmer. “Certainly, we want to get stuff straightened out…but right now it’s a real tough sell to a hurting agriculture industry,” Pollack told Reuters.