ICYMI: As Wisconsin Soybean Harvest Begins, Farmers Are Missing Their Biggest Buyer
MADISON, Wis. — Yesterday, Wisconsin Soybean Association President Doug Rebout detailed the impact of the GOP’s tariff taxes on Wisconsin farmers. In the interview, Rebout explains that farmers are unable to sell soybeans to their largest buyer, China, as a direct result of these tariffs. Despite the negative effects, GOP governor candidate Tom Tiffany, on three separate occasions since announcing his candidacy for governor, has doubled down on his support of the GOP’s tariff taxes.
WPR: As Wisconsin Soybean Harvest Begins, Farmers Are Missing Their Biggest Buyer
By: Lorin Cox | 9/25/25
See key details below:
- Wisconsin farmers are starting to harvest this year’s soybean crop, but they’re still not sure exactly where their product is going to end up or how much they’ll get paid for it.
- The state typically exports about two-thirds of the soybeans it grows each year, but those international markets have been disrupted by tariffs.
- Wisconsin Soybean Association President Doug Rebout said China is the world’s largest importer of Wisconsin soybeans, but the country is refusing to buy U.S. crops because of the ongoing trade dispute with the Trump administration.
- Rebout joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share how farmers are navigating this market uncertainty as combines start hitting the fields.
- Kate Archer Kent: The latest USDA report is showing higher than expected soybean yields this fall as the harvest begins. What’s driving that this year?
- Doug Rebout: All summer we were having some nice, timely rains. For crops, that’s the key thing: making sure you get the moisture on it. This year was one of those years where it was good all the way through, and we really did not have that many dry spells.
- We have not started harvesting yet on our farm, but just looking at the fields and walking through them, we’re going to have some really good yields this year.
- I don’t know if it’ll be record yields, but it’s going to be right up there.
- KAK: As the harvest comes in, do farmers already have an idea of where those crops are going to go? Or where, along the process, does a farmer actually line up the sale of their harvest?
- DR: The majority of farmers are just selling to local elevators, and then they’re the ones that are selling it and sending it down the Mississippi River or taking it to the Illinois River or sending it out on rail.
- They’re the ones selling to companies that are shipping it around the world or to crush plants. For the majority of farmers, the end use — where it goes — is not such a big issue. It’s just about the price. Without the end user taking as much, that’s where it’s affecting the farmers.
- KAK: What are you hearing from elevators and farmers on tariffs and trade disruptions with China? How disruptive is this?
- DR: It’s a major disruption for us, because historically, two-thirds of the soybeans that we grow in Wisconsin get exported. So when you have a market the size of China that all of a sudden stops buying from us — and we’ve exported more soybeans to China than the rest of the world combined — the U.S. is sitting here going, ‘OK, we have all these soybeans now.’ We’re working on opening up new markets to different countries, but to make up such a large volume, that’s basically impossible.
- The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, DATCAP, they’re going around talking to different countries about trade for Wisconsin products. The federal government is working on different markets, and we can get into new countries.
- But it takes a while to build up the infrastructure. It’s not like, ‘Yep, you’re gonna buy soybeans. We’ll just load up a ship and take it to you.’ It’s just not that easy.
- KAK: What kind of capacity do farmers or the elevators have to store the soybeans that can’t be sold right away?
- DR: You can fill up all your storage that you have, and you’ll fill up every nook and cranny, but you want that gone by next year’s harvest.
- It’s a product that has to get turned over within a year so you can make room for next year’s, so you can’t hold it year after year. I suppose you can keep building bins and investing in storage, but you can only build so much, and you can only hold it so long, because you’ve got bills to pay.
- We can build more bins on our farms, store it and wait for better prices, but no one knows when that’s going to be. Right now, we’re starting to look at the 2026 crop year, and we’re starting to look at prices for our fertilizer and nitrogen and seed and everything.
- This money that we’re going to be collecting this fall from selling our crop — we’re already looking at investing that back into next year’s crop.
- KAK: How much optimism do you have that the federal government will be able to work out trade deals or some other solution for farmers?
- DR: Right now, there’s not a lot of optimism.
- … China quit buying from us. They’re buying from South America.
- Even if, right now, we said, ‘We’ll take all tariffs off the table. Let’s just go back to those open markets,’ China has that relationship built up with Argentina and Brazil. They’re not just going to turn around and say, ‘Oh, the U.S. is back in the market, so we’re going to go back to them.’
- It’s a relationship that we would have to build back up, and that could take 10, 15 or 20 years to build those relationships back up.
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