TEXAS FARM RELIEF: Next week, Texas farmers will be able to apply for nearly 5-billion-dollars in aid to offset losses from an ongoing trade war with China. China targeted crops such as corn, cotton, and soybeans with tariffs, after the Trump Administration imposed a 25-percent levy on 34-billion-dollars’ worth of Chinese goods earlier this summer.
Gene Hall is with the Texas Farm Bureau, which represents agricultural producers across the state. He told the Texas Standard the farmers support the aid package.
Hall says "The ideal solution is to bargain tough, to get
back to the table, to solve the tariff situation, and start rebuilding these markets, that’s what we want to do, that’s what we expect our government to do is resolve this trade situation.”
The vast majority of this round of aid points out is not a major crop in Texas.
“We don’t grow a lot of soybeans in Texas," explains Hall. "We grow about 170-thousand acres of soybeans in Texas and you can compare that with 2.4 million corn.”
The vast majority of the aid money will go to producers of soybeans, Contrasting Texas agriculture, Louisiana’s 2nd largest row crop is soybeans. Overall, the government plans to distribute $12 billion dollars in Aid to Farmers.
