ORANGE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) – For nearly three decades, Cameron Gibson and his father have farmed the same plot of land in Orange County. 1,400 acres of which, Gibson said, grow soybeans.
Throughout his career, Gibson said, he has weathered many storms in the agriculture business. Now, farmers like Gibson face the challenge of uncertainty over where this crop will go.
“We have to persevere, that’s what we have to do as farmers,” Gibson said. “We have to battle the weather and battle all these uncertainties that we can’t control, and trade just happens to be one of them.”
While Gibson has spent the year checking his plants, ensuring dry weather has not rendered the plants unsalvageable, politicians have placed tariffs and trade bans on one another. In a normal year, he said, more than half of America’s second most popular crop, soybeans, would go to China.
This year, he said, China has halted all purchases of soybeans.
“Probably, I’d say at least 90-95% of the beans in Virginia are shipped out somewhere else and most of them are exported to foreign countries,” Gibson said. “Most of the exports used to go to China, and unfortunately we’ve had a few issues with that.”
This comes ahead of an already difficult harvest for Virginia soybeans. A dry summer means Gibson’s combines will be picking up fewer bushels of beans than ideal.
Now, Gibson is hoping that harvest will have buyers.
“Unfortunately, this trade issue is just something we’ll have to deal with and hopefully we can make it through it,” Gibson said, “and we’ve weathered tough storms, so we’ll just have to keep going.”
Luckily, Gibson said, there are other options.
“We still have Mexico, we’ve got Egypt, we’ve got Colombia, we’ve got Thailand, got Indonesia, we have Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan,” Gibson said, “the list just goes on.”
Regional economists at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center have larger concerns about the long-term impacts of China-U.S. trade relations.
Smaller farming operations, regional economist Terry Rephann warns, will be more impacted.
“If you’re out in the Midwest, there’s farms that are thousands of acres, and they’re growing soybeans, right?” Rephann said. “And the farms in Virginia are relatively small.”
Rephann said many farmers will survive this hurdle, but the long-term effects could still be felt for the next ten or twenty years.
“[Agriculture], people don’t realize it, it’s the most capital-intensive industry,” Rephann said. “They’ll go into different lines of business if they’re going to remain in the farming industry.”
Back in Orange, as the combines gear up, Gibson hopes the answer comes soon.
“If we could get a trade deal worked out with China in the next several weeks, or month or two months, it would be great,” Gibson said. “It would help the farm economy which in turn would help the local businesses.”
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