(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn and a small group of central Iowans from the ag sector say farmers don’t like bailouts, but emergency federal assistance is needed after tariff tensions roiled the grain markets. Vernon Flinn, who raises corn, soybeans and cattle in five central Iowa counties, says he’s prefer to have the free market dictate prices — but short term help is needed.

“Part of the problem we’re facing is brought on by the government, so I think the government’s got an obligation to help maybe bail guys out of it,” Flinn said. Flinn recently paid a huge bill to replace two tires that were punctured when the combine rolled over a set of deer antlers in a field. “(With) $4 corn, there’s not a lot of money to go around to buy $26,000 tires,” Flinn said.

Nunn, a Republican from Ankeny, says President Trump’s recent negotiations with China will yield results for Iowa soybean farmers — and the Big Beautiful Bill Trump signed in July provides tax benefits to farmers. “No farmer that I’ve ever talked ever says they want a bailout. What they’d like to be able to do is expand their market — that’s both internationally, as the president just showed in his Asia trip, but it’s also domestically — something that the Biden Administration failed to do for us for four years, something that this administration can do for us right now,” Nunn says.

“It’s one of the reasons I just had a conversation with (Treasury) Secretary Bessent about opening up E15 year round…and expansion of biofuel consumption in the U.S.” Nunn hosted a roundtable discussion yesterday (Tuesday) at the Heartland Co-op in Carlisle. Tom Hauschel (HAH-shell) is the co-op’s C-E-O. “We’re off to a very difficult start this year, with the farm economy what it has been and the crop size with all the fungus and rust that we had,” Hauschel said. “It’s the most stressful year we’ve had in the entire history of the cooperative.”

The Heartland Co-op was formed in 1987 with the merger of co-ops in Panora, Dallas Center, Minburn and Granger and it expanded in 1993 when a grain business in Carlisle and co-ops in Alleman and Mitchellville joined the enterprise. Hauschel says the financial pressure that started at the farm gate is now being felt at the retail level and federal officials need to develop a long-term plan for the ag sector.

“Payments are a short-term fix. It’s not going to solve the problem next year because if we don’t move this ball forward, we’re not going to solve next year’s problems,” Hauschel said, “so this problem is just going to snowball and then we’re going to lose farmers. We’re going to lose the young kids.”

A recent Creighton University survey of rural bank C-E-Os in Iowa and other Midwest states found a firm majority of the bankers believe President Trump’s approach to trade with China is about right, but nearly 85 percent of the bankers surveyed support emergency federal payments to farmers due to the financial hit of trade losses.