Trump's USAID gambit backfires as American farms now threatened: report

[cbabe]

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-usaid-2671109943/

Trump's USAID gambit backfires as American farms now threatened: report

Brad Reed
February 6, 2025 12:18PM ET

President Donald Trump may have thought that defunding the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would only hurt foreigners -- but it turns out he could actually be mistaken.

The Washington Post reports that putting shuttering the agency entirely "threatens billions of dollars the agency spends on American businesses and organizations."

In particular, the Post report notes that American farms are responsible for roughly 41 percent of all food aid provided by the agency and it adds that the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers in the year 2020 alone.

"Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, according to officials and an email obtained by The Post," the paper reports. "That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone."

… more …

(Leopard eating face #389543)

[Initech]

1. This is what you get for attacking blue states for 45 years.

[Walleye]

2. The thing about leopards is they don't care how many faces they eat. As many as possible is what they want.

[Ray Bruns]

5. Maybe they should care about how many faces they eat

[IronLionZion]

7. MAGA leopard will solve that problem by drinking diet coke

[Ray Bruns]

9. Ha!

[Walleye]

20. Obviously, there were too many faces available for him to eat

[BoRaGard]

3. "Ha ha. Farmers are suckers. Ha ha." - Felon 47 (R) and Presidont Muck (R)

republicons love to sucker people, then laugh at them. They think they are cute.

[twodogsbarking]

4. The more people he can fuck up the better. That is his desire.

[J-9]

19. I don't think

most Americans realize how much pleasure he gets from hurting people.

[prodigitalson]

32. no more than 20 percent are unaware

around 40 percent are appalled and around 40 percent approve to the point of sexual arousal.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. They never think these things through

And he has the world's richest substance abuser advising him.

[William Seger]

8. Won't matter to the rest of the reactionary cult, though

In addition to having recessive empathy genes, they are now compelled by their religion to somehow find a way to rationalize all USAID spending as fraud, abuse, corruption, stupid wokeism... whatever works, as long as they are still able to say that Musk is doing the "right things" so illegal is fine.

[wolfie001]

10. They all vote republican anyways

At least 85% of 'em. Hope it hurts 'em a lot 'til those idiots come to their senses. Losers.

[travelingthrulife]

12. Good. If that is what wakes these MAGA fools up, I welcome it.

[Prairie Gates]

13. These farmers have an imaginary understanding of their real situation

They think they are self-sufficient, self-reliant individualists. Scrappy entrepreneurs on the market. They work hard and thrive, and nobody can ever say they took a dime from anyone!

In fact, they vastly overproduce a perishable good. Every year, the government, funded largely by Joe and Jane Urban Dweller, steps in to soak up their ridiculous surplus, largely because we DO need them to produce some of what they do, but they could not eke out a living on that amount of market-needed wheat. The government could, of course, merely throw the surplus we buy from them into the ocean, but at some point, somebody had the wise and kind idea of simply giving it to people around the world who could not afford to buy it and were otherwise in need of food. The result for the government (that's me an you, Jane and Joe Urban Dweller) is good: we get to have wheat at the amounts we actually need, while these farmers get to keep their farms, despite overproducing beyond anything even faintly needed in a competitive market. The added bonus is that the people we give the food to might like us a bit more and not fly airplanes into our buildings, or side in a war with our enemies.

Those are the real, market-driven, realpolitik conditions and relations of production for America's wheat farmers. Their entire image of themselves as competititve, self-reliant individuals is the opposite of their real relations of production. We used to call that ideology when we were allowed to think in those ways.

[cbabe]

14. Agribusinesses took over years ago. Small

family farms are a myth.

When are agri corps going to push back against funding cuts?

[ITAL]

22. That's not completely true

Admittedly I thought it was before I got married too. But my wife's extended family is made up several rural farmers in central PA. None of her uncles has more than a couple hundred acres (my wife's dad isn't a farmer himself, but rents most of acreage to his in-laws to farm) and I don't think any of them does BIG business. They all seem to get by okay I guess but I know some of the recent years have produce poor yields and they worry about the future.

[yardwork]

17. You left out one aspect.

The farming industry creates huge demand for pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified crops just so that they can continue producing huge surpluses.

Those chemicals are in our bodies and those herbicide-resistant crops mean that all the wildflowers (weeds to Republicans) are gone, and so are the butterflies and birds that eat them.

I would hope for a silver lining that RFK Jr. might do something about that but I know he won't. He won't do one decent thing.

[Nasruddin]

30. It's not 100%

But if you're in a farming community, everything is organized and run by a combine of agribusiness, pesticide/herbicide vendors, county ag, and buyers. Even the land taxes are based on an expectation of how much the land will yield in the typical crop.
Nobody is going to throw you in prison or even ostracize you from church social if you grow a strange crop or do something
different ... but no support, no infrastructure, no local help, no county ag support nothing.

Farms run on debt too - sometimes because of purchase, but often just to get sufficient cash flow to plan, prepare, sow, manage, and harvest til pay day. So if you want to get along, you have to go along.

[yardwork]

15. I saw smug people wearing "Farmers for Trump" shirts last fall.

They didn't look poor. They looked smug and mean.

I'll be mean right back. I hope they're losing sleep now.

What will happen is they'll lose those farms, and China will buy them.

[maxsolomon]

16. Wait... USAID goes to food?

Not promoting Transgenderism in Guatemala?

[Mountainguy]

37. The food they provide

Makes the frogs transgender.

[Orrex]

18. The farmers will blame Democrats

[sakabatou]

21. They mean threatened even MORE

They're losing workers, or workers are unwilling to come due to possible ICE raids.

[louis-t]

23. He just keeps fucking the farmers over.

And they keep voting for him.

[Hekate]

24. Mango Mussolini is also harming farmers in California's Central Valley by dumping billions of gallons of water...

In his mad grandiosity he’s got the Army Corps of Engineers “turning on the tap” and draining away what farmers were saving up for the dry, dry growing season.

In his fantasy-world this will go straight to SoCal to fight fires. In real life there are rugged mountains in the way.

You know, Farmers of US Agribusiness, you could help us all by uniting and making an almighty stink about Mad King Donald.

[NBachers]

28. They're too busy putting signs and billboards up and down I-5 hating Newsom and Pelosi over "water freedom"

Or whatever the hell their hate – reason is these days.

[GoodRaisin]

25. When the farmer starts screaming he'll give them subsidies.

Stupid Dick Tater government.

[SharonClark]

35. Yep, Senators chuckles grassley

and joanie ernest will carve our exemptions for their rural constituents.

[Vogon_Glory]

26. Gosh-a-rooney, the consequences of gutting the USAID must be a Big Deal!

The Trump-fawning, both-sides Washington Post has been forced to take notice!

[Chakaconcarne]

27. They'll just say we should be keeping our food here in the states instead of shipping it out of country.

[Aristus]

33. I wonder what they would say if we actually did keep our agricultural surplus here,

and the market price of that produce cratered? Even the Trumpanzees would have to know that that would not be a good thing.

[NBachers]

29. Hey farmers - Reap What You Sow, dude - Reap What You Sow

[Blues Heron]

31. Hoist by their own petard

[Cirsium]

34. Eaters

American eaters are now threatened.

[eppur_se_muova]

36. "but it turns out he could actually be mistaken" ... YA THINK ??

I'm willing to concede this might actually have been meant to be snarky. Would probably pass straight under the radar with Uglicans.