Jim Moyer's great-grandfather first started growing wheat in eastern Washington in the 1890s. The farm has been in the family ever since. Kirk Siegler/NPR Closed subtitles
Eaton, Wash. - Back in the new trading era, powerful rivers in the northwest were blocked, allowing barges to bring grain from wheat fields in eastern Washington to coastal exits cheaply.
Today, at the harbour along the Snake River, trucks unload the grain into the five-story high bin along the coast. Most barges pulled to the dock will bring the equivalent of 150 semi-trucks of grain downstream to Portland.
Generally, over 90% of all wheat grown here is in countries such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, where it is used for noodles, candies and cookies. As long as Jim Moyer remembers, that's it. His family first began farming along Washington's Wolparus area in the 1890s.
"You can see the houses and buildings," Moyer said. Moyer walked through the fields of spring wheat above an old farmhouse and barn. “They have been there for more than a hundred years.”
In his west, snow melts on the blue mountains on the remote Washington-Orgen border. The past few weeks have been drier than he likes.
It's never been an easy task here, but now, like almost never before, things feel like the edge. Wheat prices have been stubbornly low for years, while inflation remains high.
“Now a combine harvester is $1 million, tractors are $5 million, and sprayers are $750,000. ”
And it seems that tariffs will not lower these prices.
"The assumption is to do a strategic approach through some ideas and plans," Moyer said. "We need certainty."
Uncertainty is the people people are talking about in the heart of the United States, whether it’s states like Washington or Montana, or corn and soy growers in North Dakota and Indiana. It is unclear which farmers are obtained from the second Trump administration’s trade policy. In rural areas of the Midwest and West, many farmers still hang 2024 Trump flags on barns, but quietly fear that his latest trade war will go bankrupt.
The U.S. government has spent decades building overseas markets for crops such as soybeans and wheat. But now all of these protocols are in trouble.
Winter wheat growing in Palouse, eastern Washington Kirk Siegler/NPR Closed subtitles
In Washington state, Jim Moyer said wheat farmers were still recovering from the trade war in Trump’s first term when the popular Trans-Pacific Partnership was demolished. He fears that irreparable losses have caused decades of trade deals.
"If you close a relationship, it's hard to reopen it and when the person you trade with, they find someone else," Moyer said.
When asked if there is a disconnect between the White House and the farm now, Moyer replied: "You know, I don't know, I try not to go there as much as possible,,,,, I don't have much control over this. ”
Trump on the farm still has extensive support
People here don't want to talk about politics in all such polarized ways now, and then tariffs, then push them out, and then start over. Washington may be a blue state in national politics, but since 2016, only one county east of the Cascade Range has been voting for Trump for three cycles.
“Obviously, the farm community is almost Republican,” said Byron Behne, a businessman with Northwest cereal growers, a farmer-owned cooperative in Walla Walla, Washington.
Behne grew up on a wheat farm near the Grand Coulee dam. He said farmers were confused by the White House comments, especially after Trump said on social media platforms that farmers should be ready to supply the United States and “have fun.”
"Even the guys of his strongest supporters are looking at that, what does that mean?" Bain said.
Northwest State - Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon - has the highest wheat production in the world; U.S. consumption exceeds U.S. consumption. Bain said it's hard to slow down all of this suddenly, or slow down or stop the exit.
From tractor parts to fertilizers, many farmers also have to be imported, and many things are needed.
"You can't just build a new factory here to produce these things," Bain said. "I mean, I know that's the goal the government stated, but this kind of thing doesn't happen overnight."
Bain said it would be the same as a generation of pain.
Jim Moyer, a farmer who recently served as scientist and dean at Washington State University, fears that many of his neighbors will not survive if uncertainty persists.
“Next year, it won’t be very beautiful,” Moyer said. “Agriculture will change forever. ”
This is a dryland wheat country. Most farmers don’t have much irrigation and can’t simply switch crops.
Anxiety is obvious here. At Oregon State University, Paul Reed and his family are trying to get it out and stay optimistic.
Paul Reed, 20, is preparing to take over the wheat, turf and low-mustard farm of his family near La Grande, Oregon. When his uncle retires Kirk Siegler/NPR Closed subtitles
“Yes, so most of my great-grandfather’s time started.
Reed is only twenty years old. He just completed his associate degree in crop management from Blue Mountain Community College near Pendleton, Oregon. When his uncle retires, he will be the fourth generation who runs his own family farm.
“Yes, it's hard, I mean, everyone tells me you're going to go at the worst. "It may be true, but if we can do that, as long as we can do it - it must be hoped."
No one here really spends any money, invests in new equipment or does a lot of hiring. Reed tried not to read the news.
He said: “It all happened until it actually happened.
Reed switches more surgery to the grass and lawn sod where he can. He also hopes to send more grain to local feedlots rather than exiting to the river. When uncertainty ruled for a day, he was one of dozens of farmers looking for some positives.
The story is part of The Voice of America, an occasional NPR national desk series that explores how President Trump’s early policies work nationwide.