Tangle - PREVIEW - Will Kaback talks with Claire Carlson about how farmers are impacted by the government shutdown and trade wars.

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

In today's episode, Senior Editor Will Kaback interviews Claire Carlson, a reporter for the Daily Yonder, who provides an in-depth look at how government shutdowns and trade wars are impacting farmers. Discover the challenges that predate these events and gain insights into the nearly existential moment farmers are experiencing. Recorded on November 10th, this conversation delves into the pressing issues facing the agricultural sector in the United States and sheds light on a critical industry often overlooked.You can find more from Claire Carlson here.By the way: If you are not yet a podcast member, and you want to upgrade your newsletter subscription plan to include a podcast membership (which gets you ad-free podcasts, Friday editions, The Sunday podcast, bonus content), you can do that here. That page is a good resource for managing your Tangle subscription (just make sure you are logged in on the website!)Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Will Kaback and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Jon Lall.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Hey everyone, this is Tangle, senior editor Will Kayback, and I'm excited to be here today to share an interview I conducted with Claire Carlson, who is a reporter for The Daily Yonder. and someone who is closely following farm and agriculture-related issues in the United States today. I came across Claire's profile when I was doing some research for the Daily Tangle newsletter. I was looking at some under-the-radar stories related to the government shutdown, and I came across this piece of hers that was titled, Government Shutdown, Trade Wars, hit Farmers Bottom Line hard. So I read the piece, and it struck me for a few reasons.

Number one, it had these really in-depth and substantive quotes from farmers about how they were being impacted by the government shutdown. And it also reported more broadly about some of the issues farmers are facing that predate the shutdown. This isn't an issue that we've tackled in-depth at Tangle before, and it felt like a great opportunity to shine a light on this obviously critical industry, but one that we don't think much about. And personally, I didn't have a great idea of the nearly ex-executive. moment that it seems like farmers are in based on Claire's reporting. So I reached out and asked her if she'd be interested in coming on the show to talk about what she's learned and some of the issues that she's been tracking both before during and beyond the government shutdown. And it felt like an opportune time to have this conversation as the shutdown seemingly nears its end. We recorded this

conversation on Tuesday, November 10th. So here is my conversation with Claire Carlson about farmers, agriculture, the government shutdown, tariffs, and more. If you like these kinds of conversations where we go a little bit deeper on some issues that we aren't able to cover in depth in the newsletter, write in and let us know. We'd love to do more interviews like this in the future and also follow up on these stories as they develop down the line. All right, here is my interview with Claire. All right, Claire, thanks so much for joining us. for having me. So we're recording here. It is Tuesday, November 10th, and the big news in national

politics today is that the Senate has reached a deal to seemingly end the government shutdown. There's still some votes that need to, they need to go through, and then it needs to go to the house and get approved, but it seems like we're tracking towards the shutdown ending this week around the 41, 42 day mark. You recently published a piece that looked at the shutdown's impact on the nation's farmers and some of the ways in which the government not being operational has exacerbated some existing issues and created some new ones. So to start, I wonder if just from a high-level view, you could walk me through some of those key issues that the shutdown has caused farmers in the U.S. Definitely. Yeah, so the government shutdown, as you just said,

it's really exacerbated some problems that farmers have already been facing. A lot of that's related to tariffs. There's also earlier this year, USDA Department of Agriculture, they laid off about 2,000 employees. The National Resources Conservation Service, which is kind of managed by USDA, but a lot of farmers get contracts and grants through that office. They have lost a lot of their employees. Those offices have been shut down since October 1st. And it's kind of interesting because farmers, they kind of work by the season. So October and November is when they plan for the next year. They're kind of finishing this season up.

They'll often go to their NRCS offices and say, hey, this is the work I did. You know, this is the work that was funded through a grant or a contract, and then they'll get paid for that work. But they haven't been able to do that because the government shut down. So a lot of people just don't really know what's going on at the moment. And that's pretty hard for farmers who really rely on those in-person resources that are available at those offices. So for our listeners who aren't familiar, can you just walk through, like, what is the NRC and what is the nature of these contracts that they have with farmers?

Is it that they're being paid for the entire year when they go in in October? Or how does that dynamic work with the contracts they've set up? Right. So a lot of these contracts, it's an application process, but NRCS, they actually, they fund a lot of conservation efforts on farms. So it'll be programs like, you know, getting solar panels onto a farm, the Rural Energy for America program, that was the big one that would get solar panels and other kind of renewable energy initiatives onto farms. It would help farmers pay for that. There's also programs like, you know, wetland conservation. It helps farmers actually protect parts of the land that they have that's maybe adjacent

to really important habitat that would be best kept, not farmland. It actually can pay them to keep that area wetland versus farmland. And that's pretty important in terms of just like ecosystem health, then also soil health. I mean, having, implementing conservation efforts, like no-till farming, which means that you're not tearing up the soil every year. You're actually letting it just sit. You're letting kind of the funguses and everything that's in there just grow and kind of keep the soil structure strong. That prevents erosion. And erosion is really bad on farms because that's like, you know, that's where you see dust storms occur.

I mean, Chicago earlier this year had a horrible dust storm, and a lot of that was because of highly eroded farmland. So those are some of the programs that NRCS funds. And were those, were these particular initiatives mostly like Biden era programs, or did they predate that? Some of them predated it, but a lot of it is Biden era funding, especially through the Inflation Reduction Act. So, and we've been seeing a lot of efforts from the Trump administration to reverse those Biden-era programs, especially within the Inflation Reduction Act, and a lot of conservation programs, especially ones that will name drop climate change, for example, those are the programs being targeted.

We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. And when you talk to farmers, what do they say about the Trump administration's decision there? Or what is the communication that they've gotten from the administration explaining that rationale? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some folks, a lot of farmers I talk to really want to stay apolitical, really. Like, it's not about politics to them. It's mainly just they want to be able to continue operating their business. And if there's a program that can maybe help them run it a little more efficiently, they'll do that.

So I've talked to farmers who, you know, are Republican and they don't want to talk about the climate change part of any of this. They have also been kind of confused by some of the lack of communication that's come in because there hasn't been much communication with these staff layoffs. And especially with the government shutdown, it's, yeah, I mean, the farmers I talk to, they were just, they have no idea what's going on at USDA right now. And that's difficult for them. Yeah. So now that the shutdown seemingly is coming to an end, let's say that it ends this week, will that money that should have been available in October become available now? Is it more so that the farmers have had to wait for this money, or is it genuinely now, like, imperiled whether they'll receive it at all? It's kind of both. It really depends on the program. I mean, earlier this year, there was a lot of coverage of the programs where funds were just frozen. So there were contracts that farmers were given that were granted, but then they never got the payout for. So there's sort of a continuation of that with the government shut down. But ideally, with the offices reopening, that will allow farmers to kind of get back. to, you know, planning for next year and talking to a USDA official. So on that front, things should be back to normal. But, yeah, a lot of the programs have just been cut over the past few months. So we'll continue to see that.

Yeah, that segues into some of the questions I have about some of the challenges farmers are facing outside of the shutdown and the unique aspects of the shutdown. I know you mentioned tariffs, and we've heard a lot about how tariff. are impacting the entire U.S. economy, but particularly farmers. I know in your article you write a bit about soybean farmers and relationships with China and how that's been impacted. I know a little bit outside of tariffs, but we've also heard recently about the Trump administration buying Argentine beef and the way that that's potentially going to impact farmers in the U.S. So could you just talk a little bit about some of those challenges that farmers are facing right now

outside of the shutdown related to tariffs, but also outside of that? Yeah. Soybeans are a really good example of what has happened. Basically, the tariffs removed the marketplace or the kind of global marketplace a lot of these farmers sell on. Soybean farmers losing China as a customer was a huge blow. And actually, as of October 30th, the U.S. and China have come to an agreement where China will continue buying soybeans again. But for soybean farmers throughout the summer, it meant that they just weren't, they weren't selling their product. And a lot of, like, some of the ones I talked to, they were just storing them and waiting for that commodity price to increase again. But yeah, it's terrorists, they can be advantageous, honestly, for, for farmers if it helps, you know,

if it encourages customers to buy more locally or domestically. But right now, what's happening is the input prices of things like fertilizer, pesticides, machinery like tractors or trucks that are shipped in from other countries, those are more expensive. And because farmers are also, their commodity prices are lower, it's simultaneously more expensive to run their business and they're making less profit from it. So that's kind of the double whammy that's happening right now with tariffs. And again, I want to go back to just the conversations you're having with farmers because I think that's something that can be obscured sometimes is you hear a lot about

what's the impact going to be on the macro level, the economic level, the GDP for the United States, the overall output. But what are you hearing from farmers you talk to when you talk to them about tariffs and the impact that it's having? So one of the soybean farmers I interviewed for this particular article, he's in South Dakota. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. This is John, executive producer for Tangle.

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For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw, Lindsay Canuth. Music for the podcast was produced by John Law. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at readtangle.com.

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