Randal Shelby planned carefully and waited years to ditch a career spent in hospitals and medical centres to chase a dream in which he traded antiseptic hallways full of sick patients for the great outdoors.
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His new life started six years ago, after he secured about US$1.3 million in financing for a Case combine and other equipment, fertilisers, seed and labour needed to produce soybeans and rice, staples that enjoyed strong demand overseas, primarily from China.
High fuel costs, rising interest rates, falling crop prices and depressed Chinese demand amid geopolitical tensions had already eroded farm profits during the previous Joe Biden administration.
Then came a seismic shift in US politics, which brought a tariff-loving president back to the White House, further rattling an industry still struggling to recover from market convulsions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the surge in fertiliser prices triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Today, Shelby faces the possibility of returning to a life he thought he had left behind, just to make ends meet.
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“I won’t have a choice. I’ll have to … that’s not what I wanted … I’d like to just pay the bills,” said the 50-year-old soybean farmer from Arkansas, a deep-red US state. “It should be my choice, not due to political practices,” he added.
