If you really want to help farmers, get the commodities wagers, the commodities market either fully regulated or replaced. I'd prefer the latter. When a farmer receives 2.37 per bushel of wheat but the commodities market closing price for the day is 5.12 per bushel, who is getting the balance? Not the farmer, so who and why? Too much rain, too little rain, who gets hurt? Not the commodities broker, then who? Who is making money from the trade wars, couldn't be the commodity brokers?
Every year, for ten years running, my neighbor's boutique dairy farm sells a bit above $800k of sheep and goat cheeses directly to restaurants and cheeses stores. No brokers. That includes sales from his roadside stand and annual catalog of smoked varieties. He started with 80 sheep 24 years ago. No loans. Now he works a bit more than 200 acres, mostly growing grasses and oak trees. His acorn fed lamb is world renown and desired every Spring. Provides almost all his own feed, leasing out herds of 50 sheep for lawn maintenance to local (within 150-200 miles) estates for a week at a time. A lot cheaper than a guy on a garden tractor, and more attractive. Every Spring his sales of butchered lamb earns him close to $1.2 mil, again mostly from restaurants and specialty shops. He also produces goat's milk, eggs, goat cheeses, hides, pears, cherries, walnuts, and a bit more. His cost vary, but he clears more than $1.2 mil annually. He's laughing at the trade wars and all the farmers who once told him he would never succeed, and they are out of business. His insurance doesn't cover him when one of his animals raids a neighbor's flower garden. He laughs, good naturedly and pays them off with cheeses that would cost them more at his stands or a store. I think some of his neighbors purposefully open his gates at night.
The commodities markets are like the stock markets, only in trouble when there are no buyers for product at discount. Both markets are down from highs, but no one is reporting an absence of buyers.
