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By Don Jenkins, Capital Press

The Kamala Harris campaign has a lengthy “issues” page on its website that never uses the word “agriculture.” The Republican Party platform posted on Donald Trump’s website doesn’t, either.

The candidates’ positions on farm issues have to be pieced together from their previous comments and their responses to the American Farm Bureau’s election year questionnaire. Both also have surrogates speaking for them about farm polices.

And both already have records on agriculture, Trump as president, and Harris as vice president in the administration of President Joe Biden. Those records will provide a glimpse at what new administrations might look like.

Both campaigns also have themes in appealing for the farm vote. According to the Harris campaign, federal spending has and will continue to help farmers and rural residents.

Trump says he admires farmers and they should appreciate him. “Special group of people, the farmers. Nobody’s done for farmers what I’ve done,” he said in September during a discussion with a panel of Pennsylvania farmers.

Trump was undeniably popular at Farm Bureau national conventions, where he spoke three times as president.

“It was amazing. Everyone in the room was on their feet, clapping and cheering,” said John Stuhlmiller, then-CEO of the Washington Farm Bureau, who attended the conventions.

“’Make American Great Again,’ that notion played very well with agriculture, which had been kicked around some,” Stuhlmiller said.

“In general, there was a feeling his administration was well in tune with agriculture,” Stuhlmiller said, “with the exception of some commodities caught up in high-level trade wars.”

Trump’s trade war

Trump had slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum, and some Chinese products. China, Canada, the European Union, India, Mexico and Turkey retaliated with tariffs on U.S. goods.

The trade war cost U.S. farmers $27 billion in 2018 and 2019, the USDA estimated. To make up for the losses, USDA distributed $23 billion to farmers during those years.

Trump continues to threaten tariffs. He said in September he would levy a 200% tariff on John Deere if the farm equipment company moved tractor cab production from Iowa to Mexico.

Farmers and taxpayers can expect more trade disruptions if Trump wins, said Rod Snyder, a Harris surrogate and former senior adviser for agriculture to the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.

“When I talk to most farmers across the country, they want to make their living from markets, not from checks from the government,” he said at a forum last month hosted by the Farm Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s surrogate, Indiana farmer Kip Tom, co-leader of the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition, said farm exports recovered before Trump left office.

U.S. agricultural exports to China significantly rebounded following a new trade agreement, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service.

Adjusted for inflation, U.S. farm exports were higher in 2020, Trump’s last year in office, than in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

“Read the book, ‘The Art of the Deal.’ You know, he may come out and have these comments and people may be fearful of them, but the reality is he’ll get the deal done, and he’ll make the trade happen,” Tom said.

The Biden administration has also embraced tariffs, keeping some Trump tariffs in place and adding its own.

R-CALF’s position

R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard said the willingness to use tariffs is a good development for U.S. livestock producers trying to compete with imported meat. R-CALF represents independent cattle producers.

“We have to have relief from unlimited imports,” he said. “We see opportunities in both camps.

“We think the winds in Washington have changed, and we have two candidates leading that change. Trump maybe more so,” Bullard said.

The Biden White House has criticized consolidation in the meat-packing industry, a position R-CALF shares. The USDA recently proposed a rule that would allow ranchers to sue meat packers over private contract disputes.

If Harris is elected, Bullard said, “I would think it would be reasonable to assume the work USDA is doing on the Packers and Stockyards Act would continue and be finalized, which is very important to our membership.”

Farm Bureau questions

The American Farm Bureau posed 14 questions to Harris and Trump. The Harris campaign replied with a four-page letter signed by campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Rodriguez.

The Farm Bureau matched unedited excerpts from the letter with each question.

On a question about the reach of the Clean Water Act on farmland, the answer began, “Vice President Harris and Governor (Tim) Walz believe that every person in America has a right to clean water.”

The answer went on to address replacing lead water pipes.

Trump’s adjective-laden answers were in the first person: “While in office, I repealed President Obama’s ridiculous Waters of the United States rule, an outrageous federal power grab over your private land.”

The same excerpt from the Harris-Walz letter served as answers to questions about regulatory reform and barriers to interstate commerce. Harris-Walz pledged to “fight to reduce barriers.”

Trump blamed rising energy and fertilizer costs on “Kamala-Biden” climate policies and said he would end “market-distorting restrictions on oil, natural gas and coal.”

Twice, the Harris-Walz letter mentioned the vice president cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, providing billions of dollars for “renewable energy infrastructure” and “climate-smart agriculture.”

Snyder, the former agriculture adviser to the Biden EPA, linked federal spending to an increase in the rural population. “These investments already are having an impact,” Snyder said.

Without going into details, Snyder cited the USDA’s “Rural America at a Glance Report.” Based on a 2022 estimate, rural areas gained population over the previous two years, reversing a decade-long trend.

The Capital Press checked the report. It attributed the growth to “amenity migration.” Baby boomers and people who work from home are moving from cities to “recreation and retirement destinations.”

Some 42% of rural counties lost population. Rural employment still hadn’t recovered to prepandemic levels. Only 1% of the jobs were in “clean energy.” The biggest source of clean-energy jobs was ethanol.

Whoever wins, federal spending will continue, said Stuhlmiller, the former Washington Farm Bureau CEO and now a consultant and director of the Washington Water Resources Association.

“Congress is going to keep money coming because there is agriculture in every state, and the need is great,” he said.

Harris on food prices

Harris has attacked “big oil,” “big banks,” “big pharma,” “big health care companies,” “big for-profit colleges” and “big corporations.”

She also promised to take on “bad actors who exploit emergencies to drive up grocery prices.”

“As president, I will take on the high costs that matter most to most Americans, like the cost of food,” she said.

The Harris campaign cites a report by the Federal Trade Commission that, according to her campaign, found evidence food companies exploited the pandemic to increase their profits.

A review of the report, “Feeding America in a Time of Crisis,” found it did not include evidence of price gouging, nor did it report whether any food company raised prices more than the rising costs of labor, transportation and raw materials.

Among food retailers, revenue exceeded costs by more than 6% in 2021. The report characterized it as “significantly higher” than the recent peak of 5.6% in 2015. The margin “warranted further inquiry,” the report stated.

Worker and Farm Labor Association CEO Enrique Gastelum, whose organization recruits foreign workers through the H-2A guest farmworker program, said he was alarmed by Harris’ comments about lowering food prices.

“My first reaction on what it means for labor-intensive agriculture was, ‘Oh, crap!’” he said. “If you start having price controls on produce, what is that going to do to the dirt farms? Not just for the farmers, but the farmworkers, too?”

Labor policies; labor fears

Gastelum’s organization is among the farm groups challenging in courts new H-2A regulations issued by the Biden administration. The administration says the rules are needed to curb abuse of farmworkers.

The Biden administration’s comments contrast with Trump’s, Gastelum said.

“I did not see him calling out farmers as bad people,” he said. “I do think Trump showed he was open to listening to farmers when he was president.”

The United Farm Workers singled out Harris among a crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates and endorsed her in 2019 before any caucuses or primaries.

When endorsing Harris this year, the UFW praised Biden. “President Joseph R. Biden has been the greatest friend the United Farm Workers has had in the Oval Office,” UFW President Teresa Romero said.

National Council of Agricultural Employers President and CEO Michael Marsh said he too would expect Harris to continue Biden’s policies.

“The mountains of regulations for farmers and ranchers coming out of this administration for the last three and two-thirds years has been phenomenal and created quite a burden on farmers and ranchers,” he said.

“I’ve not seen or heard anything from (Harris) that would change what the Biden administration has done,” Marsh said.

As for Trump, Marsh said he’s concerned about Project 2025, a 887-page encyclopedia of policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Project 2025 recommends phasing out the H-2A program. “The low cost of H-2A workers undercuts American workers in agricultural employment,” the project states.

Trump has said he hasn’t read Project 2025 and doesn’t plan to. He said he’s heard the project has some “fine” ideas and some “ridiculous ones.”

“It has nothing to do with me,” he told Fox News.

The project’s director and assistant director held positions in the Trump administration. “Folks who put that together are folks from his administration, so you’d think some of those players would be back,” Marsh said.

Project 2025, the work of many authors, presents alternative views. The project notes some “credibly argue” that without H-2A workers some farm jobs would go unfilled.

The Council of Agricultural Employers estimates nearly 1 million U.S. farmworkers are in the country illegally.

The Harris campaign, in its response to the Farm Bureau, said she supports “an earned pathway to legalization and eventual citizenship for farm and other agricultural workers.”

Trump answered: “I will prioritize merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our country contribute to our economy and strengthen our country.”

Trump continues to talk about deporting people in the country illegally. In speeches, he focuses on criminals. Trump’s election in 2016 raised fears farmworkers would be deported.

“It didn’t happen, though,” Gastelum said. “Maybe it’s just rhetoric from Trump. ... He’s very boisterous.”