Mark Tuttle farms in Somonauk, Illinois. He raises corn, soybeans and wheat on about 1,000 acres.
He finished planting early this year, thanks to good weather. But he doesn’t get to rest for long, because he’s got other things to worry about.
"So right now, farmers are busy on one thing, they’re trying to get this crop established," Tuttle said. "I wanna take care of my crops that I have now. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking about, okay, what am I [going to] sell that for?”
Tuttle is one of about 70,000 farmers in Illinois. Just like so many others, he’ll be checking on how Trump’s tariffs will affect commodity prices come harvest time in the summer and fall.
"The tariffs, you know, they come to light every day. … but we're kind of getting used to it," he said. "We've talked about these tariffs for almost 90 days, and now it's like, well, what's going to happen next? So you kind of wait and see, instead of getting all flared up about it.”
Tariffs are taxes paid on foreign products. The importer, or the country that receives the product, pays the cost. It’s meant to make foreign goods more expensive and ultimately boost domestic products and markets.
But in agriculture, it means more expensive inputs like fertilizer, which is typically imported. A lot of Illinois ag products, including soybeans, will be harder to sell abroad. China is the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans. It has since imposed retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.
It’s hard to keep track of how quickly the tariff policy is changing, but it can help to understand the basics.
Reagen Tibbs is an agricultural educator with the University of Illinois Extension. He said while tariffs can boost domestic markets, it can close the U.S. off from the outside world.
“Tariffs can restrict that access to global markets, and we saw that with that 2018-2019 trade war, when China basically stopped buying American agricultural products," Tibbs said. "The impacts of that were pretty significant.”
This time around, experts and farmers alike are watching soybeans as an indicator for the local and global economy. It was a central piece in the trade war Tibbs mentioned. In the past few months, tariffs between the U.S. and China have shifted wildly from 10% to 145%. Tibbs said the volatility can take a toll on how much farmers get paid for their crops.
"Market prices can be very unpredictable when it comes to that," Tibbs said. "I mean, just in the last couple weeks, we've seen corn prices and soybean prices go down pretty heavily, but then they'll jump back up, and then they'll kind of go back down. So it's really hard to predict what commodity markets are going to do."
There are other global factors at play.
John Bartman grows corn, soybeans, winter wheat, cereal rye, pumpkins and lavender on 900 acres in McHenry and Boone counties. His family has been running a sweet corn stand in Marengo since the 60s. He’s got a lot on the line, so he’s keeping a close eye on the news.
"Our US trade policy has absolutely no balance to it whatsoever," he said. "It's so sporadic. Farm groups, for decades, have worked with other countries to purchase our exports. These are long term relationships and just to have them be destroyed is disastrous.”
The U.S. has used tariffs since its founding, but Bartman said Trump’s approach is unprecedented.
“Tariffs are supposed to be used like a scalpel.... You don't do a blanket shot on everybody," he said. "So, if a patient has an infection in their leg, you give them an antibiotic. You don't cut the whole leg off.”
It can be tough to keep up with these changes in an already volatile industry. Crops can be decimated in one extreme weather event – like hail, tornado or a summer drought.
Back on Mark Tuttle’s farm, the wind rustles the knee-high winter wheat, planted just outside his home’s window. The rest of the growing season – and the prices he’ll get for his crops – are two major unknowns, but there’s something that keeps him coming back.
"I always say we're the most eternal optimists there ever are," Tuttle said. "You can have a terrible year, but as soon as you can get the tractor out of the shed in the spring and get out in the dirt a little bit, oh, you get a smile on your face and you're ready to go again. But, we have risk all year round.”
That’s just the life of a farmer.
"But you learn to live with it. And if you grew up on a farm, you learn to live with it.”