MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Secretary Veneman described farming there as an uncertain business. Well, uncertainty is also on the minds of economists at the Federal Reserve System. The 12 regional banks that make up the country's central bank regularly study their local economies and publish their findings in a document called the Beige Book. And throughout the latest edition - there's that word again - uncertainty. Robert Smith and Wailin Wong of The Indicator have our Beige Book report.
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WAILIN WONG: This time in the Beige Book, one big thing stood out to Robert and me - the word uncertainty. That word showed up 45 times in the Beige Book. That's a new record, and more than twice what it's been recently.
ROBERT SMITH: Part of that is tariffs. Tariffs were mentioned 49 times in the Beige Book, by the way. The president has been slapping tariffs on and then unslapping those same tariffs and then delaying the slap and then doing that thing where you sort of fake a slap and then point and laugh (laughter).
WONG: And that is creating a lot of feelings, as detailed in the Beige Book. The St. Louis Fed reported about how this uncertainty is affecting agriculture. Farming is an industry where you have to start right now in the spring, even though the future is scary and unknown. Here is what the St. Louis Fed wrote in the Beige Book.
SMITH: Quote, "a contact in Memphis noted that the current agricultural market was in a worse spot than the same time last year. Contacts noted that tariffs, policy uncertainty and a lack of clarity regarding farm bill safety nets were negatively impacting the sector. Some farmers also reported having no expectation of profits in the 2025 crop year, and others have gone out of business."
WONG: No profits.
SMITH: I know.
WONG: We wanted to hear how farmers are personally navigating this difficult environment.
ZARLON WOODARD: My name is Zarlon Woodard. I'm a fourth-generation farmer in Tunica, Mississippi. My farm is Urban Hills Farms.
SMITH: Zarlon told us that a lot of the farms do a winter wheat that they sell around the world through USAID, the same USAID that's been essentially cut by the Trump administration. So there's a lot of extra grain sitting around.
WONG: And looking forward to this season, Zarlon is worried about the rising cost of fertilizer.
WOODARD: A lot of our fertilizer comes from Canada, and with tariffs that's hitting Canada now, that's going to really drive up the price of fertilizer, which ultimately affects your overall profit margin.
SMITH: In fact, Zarlon is changing his plans right now based on the tariffs. Rice - the crop rice apparently takes a lot of fertilizer to grow, so he's switching to soybeans, which requires a lot less fertilizer. But soybean prices are low.
WONG: And they're unstable. If Brazil has a big crop, then worldwide prices will drop, and China has just put a 10% tariff on U.S. soybeans in retaliation for our tariffs. Zarlon spends a lot of his time on his phone watching international news and soybean prices.
WOODARD: It'll get to some point to where you have to make that decision to where, are you going to continue to farm? - because if you can't make a profit, you know, there's no point in continuing.
SMITH: So the farm was started by your grandfather. What would he say now?
WOODARD: Oh, I don't know what his ideas would be right now. You know, it's tough.
SMITH: But Zarlon isn't dwelling on it. When we left him, he was staring at soy prices on his phone again, trying to figure out if he should lock in a price now or gamble on it going up later.
Robert Smith.
WONG: Wailin Wong, NPR News.
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