LANA ZAK:
00:00:22
Inside seven giant silos, Aaron Lehman harvest waits to be sold. A fifth generation farmer and head of the Iowa Farmers Union, Lehman tells me that this one holds five semi trucks worth of soybeans-- at this moment, completely unprofitable. The world's biggest soybean importer, China, stopped purchasing the crop from American farmers, part of a trade war that has roiled markets with farmers caught in the middle. Is it hard not to be discouraged? It's very discouraging. We're not getting any closer to profitability. For every bushel of soybean, that Iowa farmers grow, for every bushel of corn that we grow, we're losing money.
LANA ZAK:
00:01:04
Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it would bring back essential workers at the USDA, unfreezing $3 billion that were already allocated in the previous budget. But it is a fraction of the $13 billion in new aid that farmers expected. A senior Trump administration official tells CBS News a further $10 billion could be on the way, but not until the government shutdown ends. For farmers like Lehman, every delay makes the pain more acute and foreign buyers less likely to come back. Rather than just putting a bandage on the wound, we need to fix what's causing the wound. And that's the chaotic trade policy.
LANA ZAK:
00:01:42
For CBS Mornings, I'm Lana Zak in Polk City, Iowa.
