Greenville, Illinois — It’s prime harvest season in southern Illinois, but for soybean farmers like Scott Gaffner, what’s usually a time of reward has turned into worry.
“The great majority of [soybeans] coming from this area would be going to China,” Gaffner said, but “not this year.”
China is the largest consumer of soybeans. The country purchased $12.6 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S. in 2014, compared to $2.45 billion bought by the European Union, federal data from the Department of Agriculture shows. As harvest season gets underway this year, China has made no soybean purchases from American farmers amid the ongoing trade war.
Gaffner says farmers like himself, who overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, are caught in the crossfire.
“We can’t help but feel very anxious of wondering why it’s taking so long to get this resolved,” Gaffner said.
Asked whether he’s angry, Gaffner responded, “Well, whenever you see the administration meet in Spain and they talk about TikTok instead of farming, when we’re getting ready to harvest, our clock is tick-tocking away. And the farther we go into this season, the more we’re going to lose. And China should have been buying our beans already and they’re not. It’s like crickets.”
In the meantime, soybeans from Gaffner’s 600 acres of land are going into silos, waiting for the market to turn.
The Trump administration is considering a significant financial aid package for farmers, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. The package could include more than $10 billion in relief. The White House is focusing on soybean farmers, since they’ve been hard hit by the Chinese boycott on American soybeans.
Last month, President Trump suggested some financial aid for farmers could come from tariff revenue. The Treasury Department says the federal government has collected roughly $215 billion in tariffs in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October 2024 and ended Sept. 30.
But Gaffner believes one-time relief is not a long-term solution.
“We don’t want the aid, we want the trade,” he said. “If China starts buying elsewhere, which they are doing now, once they establish those trade routes, it becomes more difficult for them to come back to the U.S. to buy their commodities. Once we lose that, we may never get it back again. And that’s huge for next generations.”
Gaffner’s son Cody would be the fourth generation to farm the land.
“If I do come back, I do have to have a second job,” Cody said.
Meanwhile, Gaffner says his fixed costs like running tractors and combines are adding up, along with high prices for fertilizer and seeds.
But it’s more than his bottom line at stake.
“We’re not just stimulating our own sales. We’re stimulating the economy in our area. In our rural area here, that economy relies upon us as farmers to keep that economy going, and so it impacts everybody,” Gaffner said.
Olivia Rinaldi and
contributed to this report.
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