Combines are rolling all across Wisconsin, bringing in what looks to be a good soybean harvest.

“I think it’s going to be a real good year for us on our yields,” said Doug Rebout, who is president of the Wisconsin Soybeans Association.

Along with his brothers, Rebout farms 4,200 acres of corn and soybeans in Rock County. While his bushels per acre looks good, the price per bushel has crashed over the last two years.

“The prices that we’re being offered right now aren’t covering the costs that it costs us to put it in the ground,” he said.

According to Business Insider, a bushel of soybeans is trading for $10.22 as of Oct 2. According to Wisconsin farmers, at that price they’re losing money.

The decline in soybean markets started in 2024, but it bottomed out in the spring of 2025 after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on China.

China retaliated by refusing to buy soybeans from the United States.

“Historically, China has bought more soybeans from the U.S. than the rest of the world combined,” Rebout said. “And so when China doesn’t buy from us, that’s a huge impact to us.”

Rebout’s semi holds a thousand bushels of beans, and the minute he drives it off the field, those beans have entered the international market, competing with growers in Argentina and Brazil.

“They’re growing more and more soybeans every year, they’re clearing rainforests, and they’re able to provide that to China,” he said.

“The facts are in the marketplace, our beans are cheaper than Brazil’s, so in the absence of tariffs, we’re ultra competitive,” said Andy Bensend, who farms 3,800 acres in Barron County.

He said most farmers don’t have capacity to store soybeans on the farm and have few options in this environment.

“Those farmers are going to harvest the beans. They’re going to load them in the truck. If they have a bin, they’re going to put them in. If they don’t, they are going to take them to the elevator. And when they get to the elevator, they have a couple choices,” Bensend explained. “Take what’s offered — or put them into commercial storage and begin to pay a storage premium, which is so much a month.”

But there’s no guarantee prices will be higher in 2026.

Bensend said there’s a very narrow window for the Trump administration to fix this trade war.

“We’re running out of time. Brazil’s planting their beans. They’ll be ready for harvest next winter. When they start making a new crop, if we don’t have ours marketed, guess what? We’re going to have a lot of beans,” he said.

Rebout said farmers that were already overleveraged will likely go under.

“Some farms are going to go under. There are some farms that are not going to be able to make it, and that’s very sad,” he said.

Bensend serves on the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board, and said the key is to create new opportunities.

“We clearly have to build other markets, and I think the biofuels thing is a perfect example of that,” he said.

The federal government sets the amount of biofuels that must be blended into the nation’s fuel mix, and an increase could create domestic demand for soybeans. That would lead to a new soybean crushing facility being built in Evansville.

CHS has already purchased land and has permitting in place to build an $800 million dollar facility that could process 70 million bushels of soybeans a year for their oil.

“If we had this market right here, that would help our prices because,” Rebout said, “all those shipping or transportation costs are, well a lot of them would be eliminated.”

Evansville City Administrator Jason Sergeant said there’s a signed contract with CHS to start construction on a large plot of land in the summer of 2026. The southern Wisconsin city government is just waiting for CHS to confirm it will happen.

“We have those dates in our contract, and they’re just obligated to kind of tell us when they’ve got to that next mile post,” Sergeant said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the company said, “CHS is further analyzing the market and biofuel policies to make sure the right mechanisms are in place to support executing further on the investment.”

Even if the CHS plan goes forward, the plant wouldn’t come online for a few years, leaving Wisconsin farmers with 100 million bushels of beans in the fall 2025 harvest and no good place to sell them.

“You know, you leave your farm to your children, and before I came along, they’d go out, they’d have to borrow money,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waunakee on Oct 1, 2024.

Even though Trump started this trade war, Bensend and Rebout aren’t sure if this will change how farmers think about him.

“By and large, Trump is a free-market person. However, he’s become a little bit protectionist with this tariff approach, and I think, I think we’re concerned. I think we’re very concerned, because it’s affecting our livelihoods,” said Bensend.

“You go talk to farmers — there are some farmers that love him, some farmers that hate him, and some farmers that are a little less optimistic now,” said Rebout.

Combining soybeans is a dusty business, but when the dust settles from this harvest, Wisconsin farmers will be on the losing end of an international trade war. The impact will be felt all across the state.

“So to think that it’s just a farmer’s problem is shortsighted. Agriculture is still the basis of our economy in so many ways, especially here in Wisconsin,” Bensend said.

“It’s not just impacting us,” Rebout said. “You know, it’s impacting our local communities, because like I said, when we have those bad years and we’re not spending that money, the local businesses aren’t getting the money.”