Women's Leadership Committee

Women's Leadership Committee

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
Women's Leadership Committee

Lorenda Overman is a farmer who's been involved in the Farm Bureau Women's Leadership Committee at the local, state and national levels.

As an active farmer, she wanted to weigh in on current agriculture issues. One of those issues is trade, which was also discussed at the Women's Leadership Committee meeting in Washington, D.C.

"We can't say what we need to get out of that crop to get a profit. We have to go by the prices on the Chicago Board of Trade. When you talk about playing the tariff game and putting retaliatory tariffs on our products, then that drops our commodity prices. We have to somehow figure out how to grow our crop and then sell our crop without losing money."

"In May, the price of soybeans was 11 dollars a bushel and it's down to 8.75. It cost us 10 dollars to grow that bushel of soybeans so we're already losing $1.25 a bushel at the current price. Corn has dropped from $4.50 a bushel to $3.65 a bushel. It cost us almost $5 to grow that bushel of corn, so we were losing money at the original price."

"I want them to understand how risky agriculture is. I mean, agriculture is a game of risk and gamble even without the trade issues. And then, when you add the trade issues on top and the prices start bouncing around, then the gamble gets greater and greater."

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