One of the greatest paradoxes of world politics is that United States farmers are mostly Republicans. It is paradoxical because, it is assumed, Republicans are against State aid to individuals and businesses, while Democrats tend to favor State interventionism.

And it is paradoxical because 40% of the income of American farmers came, quite simply, from subsidies and grants - direct and indirect - from the federal state. That means 33,000 million dollars (just over 30,000 million euros) of public money and only 55,000 million dollars (50,600 million euros) of revenue from the private sector. It is the liberalism of the funnel: for me, the wide, for you the narrow. Farmers, who are 2% of the U.S. workforce, are the minority most protected by the state in the entire US. On average, each receives about $ 16,500 (15,000 euros) in subsidies per year.

Thus, every year farmers cost the taxpayer more than the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler by the governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2009. And, of course, much more than the controversial bailout of the banks , for the simple reason that in the US - unlike in Spain - the State made money with the rescue of the financial system made by George W. Bush.

Those are the provisional figures of the American Farm Bureau Federation (something like the US Farming Federation), the employer of the sector, which also show that, despite these measures, the US field is experiencing a catastrophic crisis, only comparable to the He suffered in the 80s, when, precisely, he ruled a president who, like Donald Trump, enjoyed enormous popularity among farmers: Ronald Reagan. In 2007, there were 2.2 million farms in the United States. In 2018, only 2 million. And the figure keeps falling. In the 12 months from September 2018 to September 2019, bankruptcy settlements of US farms increased by 24% . The income of the agricultural sector is now a spectacular 29% lower than in 2013, when this crisis began.

The end of milk

The problems of the sector are multiple. On the one hand there are changes in citizens' lifestyle habits. That particularly affects milk. Americans are leaving cow's milk to take supposedly healthier alternatives, such as soy, almond, coconut, or barley milk. Last November, Dean Foods, the largest dairy company in the US, suspended payments for the collapse of demand.

But that's not the only problem. One of the largest has been created in Washington. It is the trade war between the US and China, which has caused the Asian country to close its market for US agricultural imports. The result of the Trump administration has been simple: more grants.

And that the subsidies already extended throughout the country. That is the case of sugar production , mostly concentrated in South Florida , a state that has a key political power, given that it is decisive in the election of the president. If the minimum price system created by the State and the blockade on the importation of sugar were eliminated, the price of sugar would fall by a third, and production would increase by a quarter, according to a study by the Iowa State University.

Agriculture in fuels

Of course, that University does not have to go to Florida to find cases of interventionism in agriculture. It is enough for their researchers to go outside. Iowa is the largest corn producer in the United States. Last year, it produced about 95,000 million liters of that cereal (in the US, corn tends to be measured in bushels , and each bushel is 35.2 liters; it is as if in Spain we measured the wheat harvest in celemines). Between a third and a quarter of that production goes to the production of corn ethanol. In turn, the State obliges the refineries to use 10% corn ethanol when making gasoline , although it is more expensive and less efficient than oil derivatives.

It is literally a market organized by the Government. In October, Donald Trump raised the amount of biofuel that the refineries should use in 2020 by 5% , up to 20 million gallons (to the despair of the oil companies and the joy of the farmers), of which 15 million must be ethanol from corn. The most striking thing is that nobody, neither Democrat nor Republican, complained. That may seem surprising until the US electoral calendar is taken into consideration. The primaries start in Iowa. Any politician who wants to be president knows that opposing corn ethanol is a way to start the race badly.

The corn belt, tightened by China

Ethanol is only part of agricultural aid to Iowa. The real controversy is the trade war with China. The closing of that country's market to US imports has pulverized sales of soybeans - another enormously important crop in Iowa, Nebraska, and other Midwestern states - and pork meat - whose main food is feed derived from corn-, what has caused a huge crisis in what is known as "the corn belt", which is a region of eight stages, approximately the size of all Spain, which produces 40% of the world's corn.

The trade war has coincided with a historically low period of agricultural prices. As Jennifer, a Nebraska farmer who owns 340 hectares of corn and extensive livestock, explained to EL MUNDO on February 3, prices have plummeted by 50% since 2013, both due to market developments and the commercial war. And the truce reached between Washington and Beijing in January has not had, at least for now, an impact on Nebraska. So Trump has resorted to a subsidy system that causes the state to send checks when the price falls below certain levels . "Even so, it's not enough," Jennifer explained. "For much money they send us, a caesarean section to a cow costs $ 500. If prices do not pick up, we have no future," he concluded. Of course, that didn't change his political beliefs. Jennifer had gone to Iowa to see a Trump rally. And he is very clear that he will vote again for him in November.

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