ALAMOSA — After news of the tariffs imposed by President Trump were made public on Wednesday afternoon, the Valley Courier spoke to Tyler Garrett, director of government relations with the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU). Garrett, along with many of the other presenters, had warned of the impact tariffs would have on agriculture when he spoke at the Southern Colorado Rocky Mountain Ag Conference in February. 

When asked for his read of the situation, Garrett began by reading a statement he had just received from RMFU President Chad Franke. 

“History has taught us that farmers and ranchers will bear the burden [of widespread tariffs] because they rely on imports for inputs while retaliatory tariffs from other countries will lower commodity prices,” Franke’s statement read.  

Inputs in agriculture refers to those resources and factors that go into growing crops and livestock. The term includes things like land and labor but also machinery and raw materials like seed, fertilizers, pesticides and feed for livestock. 

“Higher input costs and lower market prices are going to cause the loss of more family farms and ranches,” Franke continued, “which will further hurt our rural communities and our country. We call on the administration to use a more thoughtful and less widespread approach to trade policy.” 

Before these widespread tariffs were put in place, producers were already feeling the strain. According to “Successful Farming” magazine, the price of tractors has jumped as much as 50% in five years, and fertilizer has more than doubled. 

“And farmers are still feeling the effects of the last tariffs,” Garrett says. “This won’t help.” 

The “last tariffs,” imposed by the first Trump administration were in place from mid-2018 to the end of 2019. During that time, a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports, retaliatory tariffs reduced U.S. agricultural exports by $27 billion.   

Farm bankruptcies also rose to an all-time high at the height of those trade wars, increasing more than they had in the four prior years with 599 farms going bankrupt in 2019 alone. It must be noted that tariffs weren’t the only contributing factor. Volatile weather, already declining receipts and revenue and other factors also played a role. But, according to Intel Market from the American Farm Bureau, the trade wars bore much of the responsibility.  

“Tariffs were levied on certain things and the input costs for machinery and potash as well as all other kinds of things like chemicals all increased dramatically. And there were also fewer markets to buy products because of retaliatory tariffs. Less people buying products means prices go down. 

“So, farmers and ranchers are getting hit on two ends. They’re paying more to grow food and making less money when they sell the food. We saw this last time and a lot of them started going out of business.   

“But this one…this one that is so widespread it’s really going to hurt them, not just in their business but in their personal lives. Like everybody else, they’ll be paying more for vehicles and groceries and everyday items.”  

Garrett is concerned about the impact of tariffs on the San Luis Valley and Weld County in northeast Colorado. “I think it’s going to hit all crops and all commodities, including livestock. But the first one that comes to mind in the San Luis Valley is potatoes because of the trade deal they got with Mexico. They just got that a few years ago, and I’m afraid that those deals will be weakened.” 

He’s hoping the impact might not be as bad as some are predicting. “What we’ve been told by some people is that it may balance out because of all the potatoes that won’t be coming in from Canada. There are potato growers in Idaho and Washington, but they may not grow enough to cover all the markets, so that may – may – balance things out. 

“But the tariffs, the freezes, the firings, everything…there’s just so much chaos and uncertainty and no one knows what’s really going on,” he says. And that doesn’t even factor in the ongoing drought or recent executive orders by Donald Trump that made, among others, large cuts to USDA programs supporting local food procurement programs and food purchasing for local food banks. 

“This is truly unbelievable,” Garrett says. “It’s going to cause harm to operations. And I’m concerned about mental health issues. It’s truly unbelievable. I don’t know what else to say.”