Press trips are a perk of this job, and for the first time, I spent last week with Fendt North America in Minnesota and Iowa to join the brand's launch of its new crawler tractor and autonomous tractor, and to visit the Farm Progress Show.
I had never visited the Midwest before, but the expectation of miles of corn and the occasional soybean field was largely correct, interspersed with silos and water towers. The view promoted by much of wider our media was of a region populated by Trump signs, red MAGA hats and a generally nationalist outlook.
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During our nearly 500-mile trip across the rural heartland of these states, I saw a grand total of zero signs and, across the Farm Progress Show, a total of zero red hats.
Talking to the family at one of the farms we visited, the sentiment was the same as that of farmers across Europe. They feel attacked on all sides by the public and politics. They feel sold out by both parties and are assumed to be a backward, inept rural group. Farmers do not make up a sufficiently large voting bloc to have their voices heard in Washington, yet it is assumed they will always exist, always produce food, and largely be ignored at a national level.
The outlook of a Midwestern farmer managing 14,500 acres was remarkably similar to that of farmers in Cumbria, Devon and many of the farms I have visited across Europe.
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Yes, the broad-acre American outlook was one of yield before almost anything else, and the business model of producing 90% corn did seem a little risky. But this is a region where commodity production is king, and it is the frontier that helped America become an agricultural superpower. The sheer volume of crops grown across the region has a genuine influence on global prices and food supply, and, at least nationally, they know it.
The Midwest may grow different crops, on a different scale and under very different economics to the UK, but its focus on family and community is exactly the same. There is an infectious passion for the land, a deep sense of place, and a determination to keep doing what farming has always done: produce as much food as possible.
