(6 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Holtville, California – 5 March 2025
1. Wide of filed, workers harvesting cabbage
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Jack Vessey, farmer:
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"We’re in the Imperial Valley, the southeastern corner of California. We produce a lot of what we call winter vegetables. Leafy greens are grown in this area. We just celebrated our 100th anniversary last year. I’m a fourth generation California farmer."
3. Various of workers harvesting cabbage
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Jack Vessey, farmer:
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"Any type of tariff or trade war there’s winners and losers. There’s certain things that, you know, might be a positive for us, there may be some things that might be negatives, you know, concern on fertilizer price and some other inputs. You know, if those increase, that’s going to put a damper on things, that’s going to increase our cost. Products coming in that we compete with, yes, maybe that raises the market somewhat. But again, I mean there’s winners and losers. And to see how it all plays out, there’s a lot of unknowns at this point in time."
5. Various of Vessey speaking to workers on the field
6. Pan of Workers harvesting cabbage
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jack Vessey, farmer:
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"I mean, we’re not real sure what’s going to happen in planning for the future. As an American farmer maybe we got, you know, the positive end of it. But again, depending on what our input costs do it may be a wash for us. We just don’t know until we see the economics start to play out between, you know, supply and demand on the market side and input side what happens."
STORYLINE:
Farmers across the U.S. can expect the new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China and the retaliatory action from those countries to hurt their bottom lines by billions of dollars if they stay in place, while consumers could quickly see higher prices for agricultural products and ground beef.
But some of the impact on farmers might not be felt until the next harvest and some products might actually get cheaper in the short run for consumers if exports suffer. And the price of corn, wheat and soybeans accounts for relatively little of the price of most products.
Plus, President Donald Trump could offer farmers significant aid payments, as he did during the trade war with China in his first administration, to offset some of the losses.
In his address to Congress Tuesday night, Trump argued that agricultural imports hurt American farmers and asked them to "bear with me again" as he seeks to protect them.
He didn’t mention any additional aid.
“I love the farmer,” he said.
Jack Vessey is a fourth generation farmer in Holtville, California, near the border with Mexico.
Vessey says he hasn’t seen any immediate effects from the tariffs and that there’re a lot of questions across the produce industry of what the effects are going to be.
"I’m going to have a lot to say in a couple of weeks, but it’s so early that, you know, I’m not sure what’s going to happen," said Vessey. "We’re going to see how it plays out."
If the tariffs make farmers uneasy about investing in expensive tractors and consumers worry so much about groceries that they cut other spending, that would hurt the economy overall and could even lead to a recession.
Consumers were already worried about record egg prices amid a bird flu outbreak.
The situation has some farmers stocking up on equipment and supplies in preparation for prices to go up, but it’s not like they can easily buy all their fertilizer ahead of time.
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