Mississippi Marketplace: Could feeding soybeans to livestock make up for tariff  trade losses?

With tariffs, trade wars and high production costs, Mississippi’s farmers have had a volatile year.

Wednesday’s state Senate Agriculture Committee Hearing focused almost exclusively on soybeans and cattle, two of the state’s top agricultural products.

Soybeans are the state’s number-one crop, benefitting from easy access to the Mississippi river and New Orleans port. China is the world’s largest soybean importer and historically buys about half of all U.S. soybeans. However, since 2016 and the Trump administration’s first trade war, China has strategically shifted to buying more Brazilian soybeans.

“It’s a real dilemma for us  in Mississippi and the Delta trying to decide where we go from here with our soybean crop,” said Duane Dunlap, president of DNS Commodities, to the committee.

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