i3 - March/April 2019 - 34

Policy

By Cindy Stevens

P O L I CY N E WS

Brian Kuehl Explains
Farmers for Free Trade

 T 

ariffs on China have had a significant impact on farming.
At CES 2019, i3 had the opportunity to talk with Brian
Kuehl, co-executive director of Farmers for Free Trade,
about the intersection of tech and farming and why free trade is
essential to keep our global food chain working efficiently. The
following interview has been edited.
Q Can you tell us what Farmers
for Free Trade does?
A Farmers for Free Trade is a national
nonprofit - it's an organization of farmers, ranchers, agriculturalists and food
processors, all working to defend free
trade. Trade is important obviously not just
for farmers, but for the companies that
farmers buy products from, whether that's
tractors, agricultural inputs of all different
kinds, drones, etc. It's important for going
up the food chain to food processors, to
companies that make the food that you eat.
We have a global food chain - your daily
diet is coming from all over the world and
its only happening because of international
trade. If you live in the U.S. and want to eat
fruits and vegetables in the winter, there
is a good chance your produce will be
imported from warmer climates.
Q Can you talk about the intersection be-

tween technology and food production?
A It's important to understand that with population growth on the planet, the prediction
for how many mouths we are going to have
to feed in five years, 10 years, 20 years - it
can't happen without improving the efficiency
of agriculture. It's the only way we can keep
the planet from starving. And so, to improve
efficiency, we must improve technology -
whether that's biotechnology, improvements
of technology to harvesting, drones, fertilizer
or pesticides. Technology and agriculture
go hand-in-hand. The other thing that is cool
- if you want to geek out a little - is that in
agriculture we are seeing a move to vertical
farming and indoor farming. There are some
interesting companies that are growing - no
pun intended - in inner cities, taking over
warehouses or dilapidated structures downtown and growing microgreens and tomatoes
34

MARCH/APRIL 2019

Indiana, and you're using steel, your steel
costs have now gone up, and tractors
are more expensive. The federal government has also put a sales tax on incoming
products from China, and it's happened
without Congress being involved. Congress
hasn't put this tax on American products, the
White House has. President Trump decided
unilaterally that he wants to put millions of
dollars of taxes on products that we use for
manufacturing. So yes, tariffs are taxes.

Q How does tariff-free trade open new markets for American farmers?
American farmers and ranchers benefit
from free trade in a couple ways. Number
one, we are huge exporters of food. The
food that American farmers export and
agricultural products shipped to other
countries support more than one million
U.S. jobs.
When you think about the number of
people in the U.S. versus the number
of mouths around the world, American
agriculture exists because we export food.
Sure, we feed America, but we also literally
feed the world. Twenty percent of farm
revenue in the U.S. comes from exports,
so if you take away exports, you take away
American farming.
That is one way we benefit from free
trade. But we also benefit from imports.
Whether it's the chemicals we use in
agriculture, or equipment like tractors,
or the components in drones, all of those
exist in a global supply chain. You can't
have agriculture today without technology.
The two are so intertwined. With agriculture you might think, "Someone is out in
a field planting a product and harvesting
a product," but increasingly agriculture
is automated. We're using technology to
measure the amount of water in the soil, to
measure the application of pesticides and
herbicides, we're using drones to microtarget nutrients we're putting in the soil,
we're using satellite imaging to assess the
health of our crops, we're using tractors
and combines that are self-piloting and
that use AI. It's very high-tech equipment.

A

Your daily diet is
coming from all over
the world and its only
happening because of
international trade.
-Brian Kuehl

in vertical farms indoors. Consumers are getting a fresher product and also making use of
dilapidated structures.

Q
A

Do you believe that tariffs are taxes?
Yes, tariffs are taxes. Think of it this way.
A tariff is a country putting a tax on an
incoming product. The U.S. has put taxes
on steel and aluminum coming into our
country, as well as thousands of products
from China. The argument for doing that is
it helps our domestic steel and aluminum
manufacturers because domestic products
ostensibly should cost less.
But really, you're taxing local manufacturers. If you build tractors in Kansas or

Q What effects are tariffs having on small

business and family farms?
The tariffs from the trade war are having
terrible effects on U.S. agriculture. There
are farmers that have gone out of business.
Agriculture tends to be a very low margin

A

I T I S I N N O VAT I O N
https://www.farmersforfreetrade.com/
i3 - March/April 2019

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