Iowa farmers feel uncertainty as tariffs loom

Agriculture has been in Josh Manske’s blood for five generations.

After a career as a professional golfer, Manske joined the family’s farm in northern Iowa in 2019 to help grow corn and soybeans.

“It's always been a part of who I am and it’s what I love to do,” he said.

But the news of the Trump administration’s looming tariffs on the country’s trade partners — and their retaliatory tariffs in response — have Manske worried about how Iowa farms will be affected.

“It just adds another level of uncertainty to the mix,” said Manske, who farms out of Algona.

Manske worries that the price of potash, a potassium-based fertilizer, will rise and hurt Iowa farmers this growing season. Canada supplies about 85 percent of the United States’ supply of potash, which farmers who spoke with The Gazette say is the most commonly used fertilizer in Iowa.

The Trump administration initially threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods imported to the United States. But the administration reduced the tariff to 10 percent for potash, along with energy products from Canada, starting April 2.

“It’s not great. Dealing with the weather is enough,” Manske said. “Mother Nature is enough uncertainty to deal with, let alone this other element to deal with.”

There are three major fertilizers that Iowa farmers use: nitrogen, phosphate and potassium — or potash. Between July 2023 and June 2024, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship reported that 1,096,927 tons of potash fertilizer had been distributed in the state. Each metric ton of potash cost about $319 in February.

Aaron Lehman, a Polk County farmer and president of the Iowa Farmers Union, which bills itself as the voice for family farmers since 1915, said there are “very, very few choices” on the fertilizer market that are as effective as potash, but there are few manufacturers.

Farmers often cannot use other fertilizers to substitute because they do not have the potassium in them that is crucial to a plant’s development, he said.

“Our farmers have been very frustrated with the tariff approach,” said Lehman, who farms corn and soybeans. “The trade approach that we've taken has been the ‘go-in-alone’ approach. Instead of working with our trade partners to identify key trade issues and strategically find a way to address them to improve trade conditions for our farmers, they’ve chosen to go in alone.”

Lehman said the “go-in-alone” approach means that farms — in Iowa and around the country — will be retaliated against.

“It means that we're going to receive less for what we sell,” he said. “We're going to pay more for what we have to purchase, and it can hurt our bottom line.”

  Buy Photo

Lehman said that potash is the best example of how tariffs could hurt farmers: higher prices for potash will hurt farmer’s bottom line and incomes, he said.

“We're at the mercy of an industry that's dominated by monopolies and is very susceptible to a retaliatory tariffs,” Lehman said.

Future implications

Lehman said that even if tariffs are lifted eventually, the effects could be long-lasting or even permanent.

“A flip-flop trade policy is not a good trade policy,” he said. “It's better to have a strategic policy that works with our allies and our trading partners so that we can be seen as a reliable trade partner — not just now, but into the future.”

According to a report by the National Corn Growers Association, a tariff-based approach to global trade can lead to permanent consequences for the agricultural sector.

“Bottom line: A repeated tariff-based approach accelerates conversion of cropland in South America, which has permanent ramifications on soybean and corn exports worldwide. And U.S. soybean and corn growers bear the burden,” the report said, which was published in October 2024.

Lehman said when the Trump administration placed tariffs on China during his first term, buyers of U.S. farm products started buying from other countries instead because “they were seen as a more reliable trade partner.”

“Even when trade relations improve somewhat, some of those buyers never came back to us because we weren't seen as reliable anymore,” he said. “So that's the long-term damage from using this approach.”

Chad Hart is a professor of economics at Iowa State University who focuses on the intersection between Iowa agriculture and economic issues. U.S. producers lost some customers for agriculture-related products and produce since the trade war in 2018 with China, he said, and soybeans are a good example.

  Buy Photo

“Seven, eight years ago, the U.S. would have been the biggest producer (of soybeans), with Brazil just right behind us,” he said. “When you look today, Brazil produces basically 50 percent more soybeans than we do now. So we’ve seen a dramatic shift in global supplies, with much more coming from South America than there was before the first tariff war.”

Hart said that the threat of tariffs alone — without them even being in place — has caused “downward pressure” on the ag industry.

“That means reduced prices and reduced incomes for farmers here, so (farmers are) sort of seeing a double-whammy of lower revenues and higher costs due to the same policy,” Hart said.

Moving forward

When it comes to applying potash, Manske said most farmers apply it in the fall, but some chose to apply it in the spring.

So even if some Iowa farmers won’t need to purchase and apply the fertilizer for several months, it could still be expensive with the 10 percent tariff if still in place.

For John Gilbert, a corn and soybean farmer in Hardin County, he’s choosing to go into the spring planting season with optimism, despite frustrations with the federal trade policies.

“We’re really quite hopeful that there will be some sanity and that the markets will find some stability,” he said.

For now, however, Gilbert still has worries about the agriculture sector’s financial future.

“Livelihoods depend on being able to market to a consumer who is willing to spend, whether that consumer is overseas, or whether it's your neighbor down the road.”

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Sign up here for The Gazette’s weekly environmental and outdoors newsletter.

Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com