CNN One Thing

This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and farmers are fed up. And that was before the US went to war in the Middle East. I know what you think.

I think we're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but please show me that.

Okay, hello, let me get out of the sun here.

'When President Donald Trump came out to greet the press on Monday morning, he had just blasted out an all-caps truth social post about the war in Iran.

They want very much to make a deal. We'd like to make deal, too.

He said the US was having productive conversations with Iran about ending the war, and as a result, they would pump the brakes on his threat to bomb energy infrastructure and power plants if Iran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Points, major points of agreement, I would say almost all points of agreement.

Iran first denied there was dialog, but then on Tuesday, an Iranian source told CNN there had been outreach from Washington to Tehran, and they were willing to listen to sustainable proposals to end the war. Iran, of course, is not the most reliable narrator, but taken together, it sounded like good news, right? Signs of progress. But the timing of all this raised some eyebrows. Trump posted his truth at 730 a.m. Eastern on Monday, two hours before financial markets opened in the U.S. Immediately, stock futures soared and oil prices dropped. The Dow briefly surged 1,000 points during trading. Got some experts wondering whether Trump was rolling out this new rhetoric about negotiations in order to calm the markets and ease financial jitters. Even the new deadline Trump set for negotiations would expire just in time for the weekend when markets are closed.

'We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out.

It's hard to prove intent, of course, but Trump has a history of backing down when the financial going gets tough. Just look to his Liberation Day terrorists from nearly a year ago. Those were lowered multiple times as bond markets got yippy, his words. That moment birthed the now infamous acronym TACO. Trump always chickens out. Well now, some critics are saying that's how he's trying to handle the war in Iran. But if Trump is truly concerned about how this war is hitting American pocketbooks, He would have good reason to back off. There is real pain here.

Here at home, gas prices rose again, closing in on the $4 a gallon mark, nearly a dollar a gallon higher than when the war began.

And it's not just gas prices. Experts say aluminum, plastics, chemicals, even pharmaceuticals, they could all become pricier as the war drags on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, not to mention the impacts of the food we eat and the people who produce it.

The Middle East is home to some of the world's largest fertilizer plants. About a third of the worlds fertilizer actually passes through the Strait of Hormuz. And the timing here as farmers are preparing for their spring planting season, that too is important. Higher prices to grow and to transport your food of course can also drive up the prices that you pay at the grocery store.

This frustration over fertilizer is hitting American farmers at a really bad time, and this is far from the only pressure they're facing right now. So today, let's talk the walk.

Her name's Joshua Manske from Algona, Iowa, up in the Prairie Pothole region.

Of north central iowa josh is a fifth generation family farmer but this was not his first career choice he was actually a professional golfer until a wrist injury derailed those dreams luckily for him he had the family business to fall back on these days he's involved in multiple aspects of the industry from farm drainage to farm real estate to you know the actual farm it.

So my days look anywhere from being in the office to when the time is right being out scouting fields or out there getting the crops in and getting the crops out.

And what kind of crops are you growing?

Yeah, traditional, very traditional operation of corn and soybeans.

Corn and soybeans. I don't have a ton of experience in the farm world, but when I think of Iowa farms, that's basically what I think. Yes. Well, so take me back to the end of February when the US and Israel struck Iran. What was the first thought that went through your head when you heard about that as it relates to what you do?

Well, from, I guess, my perspective, we've been wanting to get back to a level of stability, certainty, and the return to normalcy, whether that be having a five year farm bill or not having to constantly, you know, check my phone every two seconds for a truth social message that rocks the commodity markets up or down. So you see a strike in the middle East and Now all of a sudden you're going, okay, well, you know, there's a lot of energy infrastructure within that part of the world. And what is that gonna look like for our freight costs with diesel fuel now over $5 a gallon. The instability within the Strait of Hormuz, which a lot have liquefied natural gas and oil goes through that. And that's a key component with some of our nitrogen fertilizers. So you just see that instability again, David, which in an industry that's very, you don't have a lot of certainty within agriculture. We've got Mother Nature we have to deal with, we have international markets we have to deal, which we've been dealing with for a long, long time, of course, but not to the level of instability we've seen over the last number of years, shall I say.

Well, so tell me about the fertilizer part of this specifically, because I think people hear that that is caught up in the Strait of Hormuz, but they don't necessarily understand how it like impacts folks like you.

Like for us at any given time, we're dealing with three crops, this year's crop, the previous year's crop, and the following year's crop at any time, right? So a lot of logistics, a lot of things that we have to plan for. So for us and our operation, most of our fertilizer is purchased in the fall, applied in the fall for the following years crops. So most of our stuff has already been purchased, is in the ground. We're not having to necessarily worry about it. Not, not everybody's in that boat. There are certain parts of the country. You know, have spring application. And then there's also people that thought maybe well, fertilizer might get cheaper in the spring, so it didn't apply. So now.

So they waited to find the best price, but now they're finding that it's not the time to be buying

Not great and I've also I've heard some people say that they weren't at least this would have been maybe a couple weeks ago now That they weren t able to even get a market for the fertilizer meaning they weren't t even able to get a price because of like They didn't know with all the instability

Wow, so supplier would be like, I can't even tell you what I would charge for it.

That was some of the stuff that was going through the rumor mill from what I was was hearing So I think that has since been straightened out. But again, he just throws another bunk you wrench into the whole thing

It's difficult. What would it take to make things better in terms of fertilizer? Like what is on your wishlist as it relates to the Strait of Hormuz or the war or just anything that is kind of going on in that arena?

Well, certainly energy prices, right? You think of your freight to get your product to market, right, $5 diesel fuel, that is not gonna be helpful.

You're not even talking about the fertilizer itself, you're just talking about the cost to literally move stuff from one place to another.

'I'm talking to get our grain from field to the co-op to the grain elevator. Right, right. So you're just talking that part of it. So that's going to eat into your profit margins. I, you know, some of the tariffs on Moroccan phosphate amongst others would be nice to have that relieved. And then it would really be nice and some sort of commission or something along that working group within to see what's going on within the fertilizer industry to see or maybe just antitrust enforcement within the fertilizer industry to help with the price of our inputs because that has really been a squeeze. And by the way, David, in a farming economy, if you don't mind me saying this, which has already been in, has been in a recession for quite some time and farming this year just looks extremely bleak. You know, so it's, you've had two different farm payments. You had the emergency commodity assistance program that was passed by Congress at the end of 2024. And then you just had this farmer bridge assistance payment. That hit our bank accounts here at the end of February and now we're talking about another possible payment and it's just these band-aids and a lot of ways for some self-inflicted wounds.

Well, yeah, so you talk about the bailout, and that kind of came after last year, where we saw China basically stop buying soybeans from the U.S. Completely because of the trade war that was going on. The Trump administration rolled out this $12 billion aid package to kind of tide things over. I think they started distributing that money at the end of last month, right after the war was getting underway with Iran. Have you seen any of that money?

Yes, it hit our bank accounts the very end of February.

And so what do you use that for?

Well, that, how do I say this? The running joke essentially was for a lot of producers that those dollars hit the bank account and then went to pay, you know, bills and stuff for fertilizer and other inputs to get the crop for, for 2026. So, I mean, a lot that was in the bank out, out, out of the bank relatively soon and just because cash flows have been really, really bad and, and like I said, the farm economy has been really really been bad.

Gotta take a break, when we come back, Josh and I are gonna talk about what the Trump administration is doing to try to ease some of this stress and why some of the fixes are making Josh a little uneasy. Stick around. I mean, you talked about some of the kind of regulations, the tariffs, this whole kind of situation has forced the US into some kind of drastic moves. For example, the US lifted sanctions on Belarusian fertilizer in exchange for the release of 250 political prisoners. The U.S. Temporarily suspended sanctions on Russian oil, you know, and critics have said, you know these are Russia and Belarus, these are the countries that are kind of responsible for the misery in Ukraine, and you're kind of easing some of the sanctions. Like, how do you think about just the interconnectedness of all of these moves versus what farmers are looking for to kind of ease some of these strains that you're feeling?

Yeah, obviously strange bedfellows when it comes to, comes to those moves. You've got ethical and moral questions on top of that with especially those two countries. Yeah, there's a decent amount of potash that comes out of Belarus, right? So.

So it's like you hear a move like that is that you're cheering that you like, okay, that that should help a little bit.

Well, personally, right, that's that's a tough one to swallow. That that would be something that even looking at it, even if you can say, well, that helps us. It's like, is that is that the kind of is that the kind policy that you want implemented that benefits you? Because does that really benefit you? That's you're buying that from from them and that's padding their pockets. And what are they turning around and doing with that? That's a tough pill to swallow there. I would much rather see sourcing things, obviously, as much as you possibly can from within the United States, but also your allies and trading partners. I mean, our biggest buyer of US corn is Mexico. Our biggest buyer US ethanol is Canada. We source a lot of our potash from Canada, right? So, I mean there are adversaries, right. Personally, that's a tough one for me to swallow. I that I would not be a policy. I would be supportive of I think there's other Structural things that you could do and I think There's other levers that you can use rather than going down that route. That's is that's, yeah, right? You can kind of tell, not that I'm lost for words, but that's a struggle.

No, I can hear the conflict in your voice, and it does just kind of underscore that the interconnectedness of global markets and the way farming is done in this country. And I'm sure there are a lot of folks like you who are just trying to look out for their operations and figure out the best way to kind of get through this uncertain moment. And there's an administration kind of trying to plug the holes wherever it can.

Well, I think the other important part is like, I so deeply care about the farming community in general, my rural communities. I want to see them be successful and thrive. That's why I haven't opportunities like this to speak with you, to be able to raise, you know, we're, we were fairly small niche in the world anymore, David, and to be what I try to elevate some of the, the issues that we're facing and, and why it matters to the rest of the country.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I wanted to ask because we hear President Trump talk about our great American farmers, as he calls them all the time, and he does seem to kind of be responsive to this group when they're kind of raising the alarm about certain issues. We see kind of tweaks or the bailout, you know, money that we talked about. Do you think that he has a grasp on the struggle your industry is in right now?

'Surprised and I guess disappointed that there was and maybe this is, you know, just I guess you're looking for lip service But there was no mention of the farm Economy being essentially in a recession by the president In the state of the union, which was a bit really surprising for somebody who's at least Rhetorically, you'll speaks of the industry You know in a positive way policies, obviously, I think, have not helped. You know, the positive thing I have seen, like I said, within the administration would have been the investigations within the anti-trust division of the Justice Department. I really would like to see some follow through with that. Not to be cliche, but as I get older, you know, they'll talk as cheap. Maxim resonates with me more and more each day. It's like, don't tell me what I want to hear. Like, let's see some follow through with some of this stuff. I know you think we're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but can you please show me that?

Can I ask, did you vote for President Trump in 2024? I did not. What about in 2016 or 2020? No. I'm assuming that you know folks who did though, you know, in Iowa. We're best friends. Do they have any regrets?

You hear it once in a while. Yeah, some of it. And then some of the trade policies and those kinds of things. You know, we live in a definitely a divided country. There's no doubt about that. And, you know, I have these discussions with people just about every day.

I want to understand the timeline a little bit here. If the war ended right after we got off this call, the Strait of Hormuz was opened up, Iran was like, anybody can go through, all good. An unlikely scenario, I must admit. But if that were to happen, is that immediate relief for you? Or is there still stuff tied up in this that is going to take some time to unwind? Like, how do you try to plan for what might be ahead?

That's kind of our, has been my biggest concern. Has it necessarily, at least for, you know, within our own internal operation, has it necessarily been for the 26 growing season, it's sourcing fertilizer and what the price is going to be here come August, September, when we have to book that fertilizer and what that means for the 20, 27 growing season. I know you're like, how are you, you're thinking that far ahead or, oh yes. Yeah. We're thinking that far head already. Most of us are just looking for some certainty and some stability and return to normalcy within the industry. That is obviously a very unstable industry to begin with. The only thing that we can do is hedge, right? That's really our only, our thing with our grain is like we can go to the futures markets and hedge ahead the best we can to make sure that your costs are covered. I think the other thing, David, that's important to realize with this is when margins get really tight like that, that makes it more difficult to put your dollars back within your operation, right, whether it be on the machine side or fertility. Those kind of things. That's the other problem with this, is you see the reverberations within our rural communities, but also just within our operations. We like to try to make sure we're improving things. We're improving the soil. You know, it's our patriotic duty to take care of the nation's greatest resource, which is our soil, and to conserve that. And so, like I said, with margins, you're tight. That makes it difficult to do that.

Do you ever wish you could go back to golf full time? Oh gosh, there are days, David, yes. I guess you still have to worry about weather in golf, but maybe not all the GL politics of it all.

'This is true. No, this is very true. Weather has been a part of my day-to-day existence for a long.

Long time. I bet. Well, Josh, thanks very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

David, I appreciate the opportunity to be on with you and speak about, like I said, my farming community and the rural communities, which I love and care so much about.

All right, that's all for today. Thank you as always for listening much more on this story over at cnn.com and we'll be back on Sunday with another episode. Talk to you later.