On the Cotton Farm: Stockpiling and Fearing Big Losses From Trade Fight

[mahatmakanejeeves]

U.S.

On the Cotton Farm: Stockpiling and Fearing Big Losses From Trade Fight
In Arkansas, exports have tanked and prices dropped: ‘It’s going to be a struggle’

By Kris Maher | Photographs by Andrea Morales for The Wall Street Journal
July 22, 2019 11:39 am ET

AUBREY, Ark.—When cotton farmers meet at the Aubrey Country Store & Grill, a lunch spot surrounded by farmland in the Mississippi Delta, the talk inevitably turns to global trade these days.

Cotton exports to China have tumbled, and the domestic price for the crop has fallen roughly 30% since China slapped retaliatory 25% tariffs on U.S. farm commodities last summer. Stockpiles of U.S. cotton are forecast to be the highest in a decade.

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[Botany]

1. I wonder how many of those cotton farmers voted for Trump?

60.6% of those in Arkansas voting in 2016 voted for Trump.

[unc70]

3. Nearly all voted for Trump

The farmers are overwhelmingly white males roughly 80% voted for Trump. Just a guesstimate, but consistent with polling.

[Botany]

4. I looked up the county where the farmers were meeting (Lee County) and it went for Hillary but ...

.... it might have a large % of African Americans in it. But I have no doubt that a vast
majority of the white rural southern cotton farmers voted for Trump.

[safeinOhio]

2. Levi is now making hemp jeans.

Stronger and softer than cotton.
Arkansas could restore all the damaged top soil from cotton farming by switching to hemp.

[Farmer-Rick]

5. Ross Perot's father made a killing on cotton contracts

Of course that was way before Trump decided he was some kind of stable genius and started f*cking over our economy.

But as a white male farmer, all of us aren't stupid enough to vote for a traitor and psychopath who married his Slovenian sex worker. But we are mostly small organic farmers who hate watching some of our friends, the chemical farmers, lose money markets and self respect. But love telling them I told you so.

[matt819]

6. On the plus side?

I just bought 100% US cotton, US-made t-shirts (from an ad on Instagram I'm a little embarrassed to say). Intro sale. Nice t-shirts.

There are manufacturers of jeans in the US. Many are so-called high fashion, and the prices are obscene. Some are normal jeans. Prices are still higher than Levis, but the quality is good (I've bought from Diamond Gusset and, I think, All American Jeans). This could benefit them. I need some new jeans, and I will probably end up buying Levis jeans made in Lesotho or Nicaragua.

I don't know the politics of any of these manufacturers. I'm guessing the jeans makers are RW, as they are based in the the heart of the south. Should I care? Well, it does bug me a little (as it does when I buy boxes from U-Line, owned by an extreme RW family). But my rationale is that if I were to enact my own mini-boycott, no one will notice and no one will care. On balance, I have to say that I'm so fucking tired of every decision I make being weighed on political, environmental, and Amazon spectrums.