For the 11th time, Dr. David Kohl, professor emeritus of agricultural finance and small business management and entrepreneurship at Virginia Tech University, will join Lynn Paulson, Bell’s director of agribusiness development, at our annual AgViews Live seminar in July. Ahead of the event, we caught up with Dr. Kohl to discuss some of the biggest issues affecting farmers and ranchers today.

What can attendees look forward to at this year’s AgViews Live?

One of the things Lynn and I hope to do with this summer’s event is give attendees a global and domestic view, from our thoughts on tariffs to the shape of the future of the economy. We want to go up 30,000 feet to show them the big picture, then go back down to provide practical takeaways on adapting to chaos and uncertainty.

Because in this type of environment, you need the ability to call an audible. You have to be adaptable, nimble and resilient to be able to manage through unpredictability. Chaos creates opportunities if you have a management mindset. If you don’t, it can take you out quickly.

We’ll also touch on issues related to your lifestyle and your health. We hope to involve every generation, from the older generation starting to think about retirement to the younger generation just starting out. Regardless of your age, there will be something for everyone.

You mention the current chaotic environment. What are the most significant economic pressures facing farmers and ranchers today? 

What’s most significant to me is the magnitude of the changes that are occurring, whether it’s weather, tariffs, export markets, you name it. The prices, the uncertainty, it puts everyone in a vortex of chaos.

Having uncertainty in those export markets – particularly if you’re involved with soybeans or some of the major commodities that are export oriented – affects your planning, your investments, everything. It not only places a financial stress on you, but an emotional and mental stress as well. The amount of change, and the extreme pace of change, creates a much more chaotic environment than we’ve had the past few cycles.

What strategic shifts can producers consider to adjust to current trade policies and tariffs?

Right now, we don’t know how tariff and trade developments are going to play out over the next year. If you’re in the commodity business, this uncertainty can influence your prices. One of the things it really requires, as Warren Buffett says, is a behavioral advantage. How are you going to be able to have a behavioral mindset to not be paralyzed in the face of uncertainty, and keep managing forward?

That means it’s important to carefully manage your budgets and your cashflows. You have to know what your cost and prices and break-evens are, and what you can do as far as a marketing and risk management program. Crop insurance, livestock insurance – at what levels do you need to apply? How can you minimize losses?

Being able to take advantage of a profit window or minimize your losses through marketing, cost management and price management is all extremely critical. One thing that can help is having a sounding board or advisory team. Whether that includes your lender, farm management instructor or your crop or livestock consultant, find another set of eyes to get the lay of the land and bounce ideas off of.

Can U.S. agriculture recover from some of the damage being done to our export or trading partners?

One of the things I’m very concerned about is the possibility that we’ve destroyed a lot of trust with our trading partners, especially our big three of Mexico, Canada and China. There’s an old saying – with trust, it’s the stairs up and the elevator down. It takes stairsteps to build relationships, but when you destroy it, it’s down and it’s down fast. It takes a long time to reestablish those relationships.

Politics is like a pendulum. We go one way, then we go back the other way a couple years later. Things might be very different when we gather for AgViews Live in two or four years, and we have to be very careful not to let short-term elements influence our long-term decision making. But for now, we’ve hindered a lot of our negotiations and trust with some very valued customers around the world. I’m not saying these relationships didn’t need to be reset in some way, but the magnitude and the way we did it could have long-lasting consequences. The elevator went down fast.

Can we recover? Yes, but that leads us to another challenge, which is that we now have more competition than ever, especially coming from the Global South. Other countries now have other sources of food, fiber and fuel, and that is the element that really concerns me. The competitive landscape has changed significantly in the last 10 years.

Speaking of the Global South: can that commodity growth juggernaut be slowed? Can the U.S. compete in the production of bulk, raw commodities?

I don’t know if it can be slowed. The Global South has resources and land that can be put into production along with the technology needed to expand. It’s a force that has been growing and accelerating over the last 15 years. So that juggernaut, it’s going to be tough to beat. If anything can slow it down, it will be weather and geopolitics – so keep an eye on that.

This article appeared in the Q2 2025 issue of Bell’s AgViews newsletter.