The trade war between the U.S. and China is likely to shift U.S. soybean plantings to corn. For the first time in three decades, U.S. farmers planted more soybeans than corn in 2018. However, that’s likely to reverse again due to tariffs on U.S. soybeans from the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China. Dow Jones Business and Financial News reports farmers could convert as much as four million acres from soybeans to corn next spring. For 2018, the Department of Agriculture estimated U.S. farmers planted 89.1 million acres of corn, and 89.6 million acres of soybeans. Soybean inspections from U.S. west coast ports are down 82 percent from year-ago levels, and soybean prices have dropped 11 percent as China has enforced a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans. Market experts say final planting decisions for 2019 may not occur until weeks or even days before farmers plant fields due to the uncertainty over tariffs.

The trade war between China and the U.S. will not be ending soon. President Donald Trump recently told Agri-Pulse that “you’ve got to have a little time,” referring to when trade relations may return to normal or better status between the United States and China. President Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 meeting in Argentina, but those talks are not likely to propel any major shift toward reaching an agreement on the future of trade between the two nations. The trade war started with Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, quickly escalating to include tariffs on U.S. farm products, most notably soybeans and pork. Further, a recent survey reported by Reuters shows that 85 percent of U.S. businesses surveyed say they have suffered from the trade war’s tariffs, and nearly half of the companies reported increases in non-tariff barriers, as well.

Canada is willing to stall a potential trade deal with China until China starts behaving better, according to CBC News. Canada’s ambassador to China says a trade pact doesn’t seem likely to be reached until China shows flexibility on controversial policies. Ambassador John McCallum says right now, much of the work on a potential trade agreement is focusing on “bridging policy gaps” on agricultural market access and political policies. He said last week: “We are doing our best to persuade China to behave in what we would regard as more reasonable.” Canada is working to reach an agreement with China, despite new provisions in the updated North American Free Trade Agreement that seek to block trade pacts with China. The NAFTA 2.0, renamed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, includes language that allows the nations of the agreement to withdraw from the pact if another nation created a trade agreement with China. However, Canada maintains that doesn’t stop them from engaging with China, and the USMCA is not yet finalized.

When it comes to just who is eligible for trade aid, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said Smithfield Foods shouldn’t be one of the companies which are eligible for help, but there may be no choice. Smithfield is owned by Chinese conglomerate WH Group. Grassley took to Twitter and says, “Smithfield seems to be in a ‘can’t-lose’ situation thanks to American taxpayers.” A spokesman for the Iowa Republican, who’s also a member of the Senate Ag Committee, says Grassley is looking into the matter. Early last week, the Washington Post reported that Smithfield does qualify for trade aid assistance. The Post says the idea of a bailout program helping out Smithfield has angered small hog producers across the country. The Post report says the situation shows how difficult it is to craft relief programs and keep the payments exclusively in the hands of domestic companies. Companies that have long international reach make it difficult to ensure U.S. dollars stay in U.S. hands, regardless of their intended target. In an email, a USDA spokesman says the agency does not have the ability to make sure relief money doesn’t eventually filter into Chinese hands.

The Trump Administration has no plans in place for 2019 to give any more aid to farmers hurt by tariffs. Bloomberg says that’s based on assumptions that markets will recover even if the trade war with China keeps going. Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue made that announcement last week. Back in July, the administration announced it would deliver $12 billion in aid to farmers hurt by the tit-for-tat tariff war with China. Last month, farmers were able to apply for the first round of aid that totaled $4.7 billion. Perdue didn’t disclose when a second round of aid would be distributed. Perdue says, “The trade war impacted farmers after they made planting decisions for 2018. The market will equilibrate over a period of time.” He told farmers at a stop in Illinois last week that there is not an expected or anticipated market facilitation program for 2019. Perdue didn’t offer any guesses as to how much longer the trade war with China would continue, saying only that “the onus is on China.”

USDA is considering the possibility of adjusting direct payments to producers who’ve been hurt by the trade war. The adjustments may include factoring in hurricane damage after southeast U.S. producers were hit hard by hurricanes this year. A DTN report says Perdue asked USDA staff to look at the fact that they believe payments should be based on actual production and not country averages. “I think we’ve got to look at situations where people had good crops that were totally obliterated,” Perdue says in the DTN report. “These safety-net programs don’t factor that consideration into the equation.” Meantime, Perdue made clear that USDA will be announcing a second round of payments under the Market Facilitation Program to producers hurt by tariffs. He didn’t say when the announcement of another round of payments would be made. USDA officials had previously said it would be happening in December. The secretary said last week that he wanted to allay concerns that the second round of trade-aid payments might not be made to U.S. producers.

During a Champaign County, Illinois listening session U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue confirmed the second round of Market Facilitation Payments for farmers will be coming in December. Secretary Perdue says his agency unsuccessfully looked for ways to vary the payments from region to region based on the impact of Chinese imposed tariffs. There had been some speculation, for instance, farmers in the Dakota’s might end up with bigger payments because soybean exports out the PNW to China have stopped. But he says that while they looked at that issue early, they could not find a way to reasonable get it done.As for next year, Perdue says farmers should not expect to receive more payments to compensate them for losses due to the Trump Administration’s trade policy goals. Perdue also told the gathered farmers in Illinois, more than once that they should look to diversify their operations in order to avoid the market disruptions caused by the Trump Administration’s rebalancing of trade.

The world’s largest grain processors are jointly seeking to standardize and digitize global agriculture shipping transactions. Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus announced the collaboration this week in an effort to benefit the entire industry and seek broad-based industry participation to promote global access and adoption. Initially, the companies are focused on technologies to automate grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes, as they represent a highly manual and costly part of the supply chain, with the industry spending significant amounts of money every year moving documents around the globe. Eliminating inefficiencies would lead to shorter document-processing times, reduced wait times and better end-to-end contracting visibility. Longer term, the companies want to drive greater reliability, efficiency and transparency by replacing other manual, paper-based processes tied to contracts, invoices and payments, with a more modern, digitally based approach.