I’ve had conversations with farmers this summer that include, “This is the best crop I’ve ever seen.” Then we quickly remind each other that nothing is in the bin yet. Farmers can never appear to be exuberant. Restraint must be shown.

Being a farmer means you are an odd mix of hopefulness yet filled with dread. You plant a crop or buy some feeder cattle. In either case, you’ve gone long in the market. You hope for the best. All the while, you’re aware of a hundred things that can go wrong.

While there is time for harmful weather, pestilence, disease, terrorism, you-name-it, to attack these crops, they sure look good now.

Dare I say it?

They look perfect.

There. I said it.

Did I jinx us?

By putting that into print, I may have. If things go bad, I take full responsibility.

Not all are so fortunate. There have been fields that had too much rain, hail, and wind damage. As always, there but for the grace of God, go I.

For much of southern Minnesota, a nice early planting season has been followed by well-timed rains and warmth, but not oppressive heat. Slightly cooler temps fell around pollination. It’s as if a Hollywood corn producer scripted it.

If, there’s always the “big if,” if we finish well, corn should easily go over two hundred bushels per acre. That number was just a pipe dream when I started this fifty years ago. Farmers are whispering about the best fields touching three hundred bushels per acre.

There. I really jinxed us.

I like to climb on the top of the bin to get the big picture. From there, I can see areas that drowned out or where corn is stunted or where the planter was pulling through a muddy spot.

This year, it’s nothing but perfect yellow tassels as far as eye can see. This is what’s in your mind when you’re planning the crop in January. But to see it look like this in August is the stuff of dreams.

I thought of a song by Iowa singer Greg Brown. Brown writes loving and ironic songs about his home state. This part of Minnesota is sort of northern Iowa when it comes to the Corn Belt, so his songs connect here. He has a song called “Walking the Beans.” If you’re my age, you remember that miserable activity.

In another song, “Out in the Country,” Brown anthropomorphizes a field:

I’m a July cornfield far as you can see.

I’m a July cornfield far as you can see.

And if you be real careful, you can walk on top of me.

(now speaking) Ah, you got to believe though. Now first you get your one foot up there, and then you gotta get your other foot up there. Easy now. You can do it.

From on top of my bin, I believe I could walk across my field.

It is one thing to grow a crop. It is another thing to make money at it. If you know a farmer, you’ve heard prices are down and expenses are up. I just hauled in the last of my 2024 soybeans and settled for $9 a bushel. The $14 of a couple years ago is a distant, wistful memory.

Oddly, we might grow the best crops we’ve ever had and still collect from crop insurance. Most of us have “revenue protection” coverage now that guarantees a dollar amount rather than simply a yield guarantee like was in the past. I’m not sure if we’ll collect. We’ll see.

The bounteous conditions generally hold forth across much of the nation’s midsection. A good-looking crop obviously puts downward pressure on prices. Supply and demand have a role to play. But then there are externalities that affect the market. One of those sits in the White House.

Here I’m going to talk about Mr. Trump. I have readers who don’t like that. They should look away now.

I truly don’t want to talk about that man. But he really can never shut up a day. He craves attention. Here I am giving it to him. I guess he wins.

There are two sides to the ledger when it comes to farming. There is the price you will receive and the expenses you will pay. Mr. Trump’s fingerprints are all over both sides.

First price. The head of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association wrote this:

“The crop is looking solid, but we need to get our soybeans moving. With zero sales going to China right now, it’s going to put a lot of pressure on our farmers going into the fall, and it’s going to cost farmers a lot of money.”

If you’re paying attention, you know Trump’s first administration damaged our traderelationship with China. Trump Two is doing everything to kill it. For the first time in two decades, China has not purchased any soybeans of our upcoming harvest.

What does anyone expect?

Trump’s daily if not hourly shifts on tariffs and bellicose statements make the United States anything but dependable.

Groups like the Soybean Growers have made significant efforts to develop the Chinese market. Concurrently with that, acres of soybeans have increased. We grow soybeans in the Dakotas and northern Minnesota where we didn’t before.

Now China is pouring money into Brazil to increase their capacity and to be the reliable trading partner we aren’t. I can’t predict the future. But one can see a troublesome scenario where we have a lot of soybeans that aren’t worth very much.

On the opposite side of the ledger are our costs. The fertilizer I am booking now for next year is at all-time high. Guess what? Trump’s tariffs, especially on Canadian potash, are a large part of that.

In Trump One, to compensate for being in the cross hairs of trade disputes, farmers received “Trump Payments.” For which Trump took credit, and you taxpayers paid.

Will there be payments this time?

Those could be especially distasteful when cuts to foreign aid are literally causing deaths in places like Africa.

Trump has said no one loves farmers as much as he does. He’s got a funny way of showing it.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.