China didn’t meet its Phase One Trade commitments. Last month, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said China was $13 billion short on purchases. Bill Hunt of Hunt Farms in Davison, says falling short was better than not having an agreement.
“We had nothing with China before we had Phase One,” he says. “Last year they were a little short—we know that going into it. They started way too late the first year of our two-year agreement. Then with the political issues that’s going on today, I felt they were going to use this as a last resort, which they did.”
Without having Phase One, Hunt says it would have been harmful for Michigan’s soybean producers. But as a farmer, his glass is half full.
“Beans and corn were both very important, but I hope moving forward we step up and have another agreement with them because it’s very important,” says Hunt. “We need those people. They have a lot of mouths to feed, and they need our product. If we wouldn’t have had anything, we would have never been where we are today. We’ve got to be thankful for the amount of bushels they took in last year’s production, but at least they took some.”
Right now, there aren’t any published numbers to specifically share the financial impact to farmers.
“We can sit here and say, ‘They took 30 cents out of the soybean market. They took 60 cents out of the soybean market,’” says Hunt. “We’ve had so many positive things happen in the marketplace as far as making the market rally from where it was. To say how much Mr. Farmer lost on this without them fulfilling their agreement is really hard to determine.”
Field crop farmers have a lot of things hanging in the air: the ability to buy herbicides, fertilizers, and uncertainty of the energy markets. Even with strong prices, Hunt says he’s wary.
“They’re saying, ‘Jeez, we should be happy with these prices we have today because it’s still a profit.’ I don’t know what the profit is,” he says. “My unknown is I don’t have any idea what my yields will be. I can tell you now, everything is higher than it was a year ago. Yes, we had a good year and good yields with good prices, but now they’re trying to take everything we had back. I’m not sure where we’ll be at the end of next year.”
Hunt is involved with Michigan Soybean, Michigan Corn, and served as past president of the Michigan Wheat Board.
