WACO, Texas (KXXV) — President Trump's potential farming and agriculture tariffs are looming. One farmer talks about these tariffs' potential impacts on her land, animals, and everyday life.
- Corn and soybean prices have fallen roughly 10% since the tariffs were first announced a couple of weeks ago.
- However, farmers will see fertilizer prices increase because 85% of the fertilizer American farmers use comes from Canada, which also supplies some nitrogen fertilizer as well.
- Brandee Master of Meixner Manor farms is one of 65% of women running farms in McLennan County.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Brandee Masters loves every one of her animals on Meixner Manor Farms.
“We’ve been in business for about two years,” Masters, Owner of Meixner Manor Farms, said.
Being one of the newer farms in the area, she offers a unique selection.
“We all started wanting animals just because we do have enough acreage so we're like, what should we do? So we started getting miniatures because the old craze was getting miniature animals so we started with pigs, so we have Cooney Cooneys, but now we have Julianas we found out they're even smaller, so we want to end up breeding them to create miniature Cooney Cooneys, but then behind me we've got the Nigerian Dwarf Goats and so of course they're miniature,” Brandee said.
As cute as these can be, feeding and maintaining them costs a lot.
With President Trump’s potential tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada looming, these farmers feel on edge.
“Of course, like if they stop the tariffs that their prices are going to go up and so I know people are scared about like farming equipment or feed or stuff like that will go up in price you know we're a little scared about it but we're thinking like for our needs specifically here just to keep buying American just to keep it at the same low price,” Brandee said.
Buying feed almost every weekend gets a little on the expensive side.
“I guess our overall yearly rate would go up higher,” Brandee said.
But she thinks the difference in tariffs is buying American.
“Just with how like if we're teriffing other people for our goods, uh, well actually we're not, we're not teriffing other people for our goods, but they're teriffiing us for theirs,” Brandee said.
