Governor Tim Walz visited the Cannon Falls area farm of Danny and Mary Lundell on Tuesday, March 4, to talk about the recent tariffs and their effect on Minnesota’s agriculture industry. Joining Walz was Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen and Danny’s cousin, Stan Lundell, in talking about the tariffs’ effects.
“It’s always special to me to get an invitation to stand on places like this. You look out across here, and I’m just hearing that this cemetery back here holds six generations of this family that was on this place before Minnesota was a state in 1856 and that lineage,” said Walz after being introduced by Cannon Falls Mayor Matt Montgomery. “Yes it’s economic, but what we’ve always said when it comes to agriculture, it’s cultural and it’s the soul of who we are. As we’ve seen consolidation and operations getting bigger and bigger, the characters of rural Minnesota and rural America change because of that. The importance of making sure that if folks want to be able to be on the land, want to produce, that they’ve got an opportunity.”
“They're willing to take the chance and do the hard work. What they don’t need is more uncertainty. The weather provides enough of that, whether it’s drought last year or flooding. The uncertainties that are out of their control, producers have always dealt with that. It’s the man-made disasters that are avoidable and the ones that we really need to keep a look on,” Walz continued. “Building markets and having a place for our commodities, Minnesotans are innovative as heck. We have been at the forefront of the Green Revolution, we’ve fed the world, the folks that are on pieces of land just like this. And now, for whatever reason, we decided to pick a fight with our biggest trading partners, with Canada and Mexico and China, the top three.”
Danny (far right) and Mary (middle) Lundell welcome Gov. Walz to their farm Tuesday afternoon just before the rain started. Alec Hamilton / Cannon Falls Beacon
The Lundells were joined by several neighbors and assorted media as they told Walz and Petersen about the farm. It had been in Mary’s family for 159 years, while Danny’s and Stan’s family had farmed in the area just as long. Mary said it was originally a diverse farm with turkeys, chickens, pigs and dairy cattle. Her father was a dairy farmer and she and Danny continued that tradition when their children were young, but have since pivoted and specialized in corn and soybean crop farming.
Tuesday was the date that 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico went into effect after being delayed about a month, while a 10% tariff on imports from China also went into effect. Since Tuesday, the Trump Administration has clarified that goods complaint under the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement would not be subject to the tariffs until the beginning of April.
“What to even say about tariffs? We’ve seen this show before as we came in and took over in 2019. First thing I want to remember is we have a process in place. President Trump negotiated the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) which took over for NAFTA,” said Petersen. “We have a trade agreement in place that I would argue is working. We’ve had decisions both against Mexico and Canada that ruled in our favor, that have opened up those negotiations. That’s up for review in 2026 and so as we get into 2025, we should be working on that, not putting a tariff on our neighbors and our biggest customers.”
Walz and Petersen both emphasized the work they have done finding new markets for Minnesotan goods and replacing markets that were lost in 2018 when the U.S. and China traded tariffs. Since Tuesday, the Trump Administration has increased its tariffs on China to 20% and China responded with their own up to 15%, according to TIME, on U.S. agriculture imports. Canada and Mexico also announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. food products.
“So now we’re slapped with these 25% tariffs. Our exports to Canada, over $1 billion dollars, our exports to Mexico, over $1 billion dollars. These are our friends, these are people who work with us,” Walz explained. “You’re going to hear from the Commissioner and you’ll hear from Danny a little bit, he’s thinking about this, fertilizer and all the other things. I saw a CEO on this morning talking about food prices, you will see it within the next few days start to happen. That was not the promise.”
Walz also referenced what Minnesota experienced in 2018.
“For those who think we’re going to win this, and Canada’s going to give in, that’s a very simplistic way of looking about this,” he said. “The one thing that’s going to happen if this thing goes on for any amount of time, these trading partners are going to look for other partners, they’re going to look elsewhere. We know we lost markets for our soybeans in China the last time we did this, they went to Brazil, they went to Argentina, they’ll go somewhere else. And we have to be trusted trading partners because folks are working too hard out here producing what the world needs. We all benefit from this. I’m nervous about this, especially for our small producers, because we know when these things go bad and people have to sell, we get consolidations.”
Petersen echoed Walz’s comments on the impact of tariffs, particularly from Canada.
“You look at Canada for example, almost a billion dollars a year just in agriculture going both ways. You think about corn that we sell there, our ethanol market is a burgeoning piece that’s really opening up. I was at a plant in southwest Minnesota who was just working on signing their agreement going into Canada and now they’re not sure what they’re going to do,” he said. “You look at our pork industry, Minnesota is the No. 2 pork producer in the country. We import almost 750,000 piglets or isoweans from Canada, that’s also a bio-security issue. There’s a reason why we import is to bring those healthy piglets into our area, very interdependent on that. And then as Danny mentioned, potash. Potash is really important when we look at that value.”
PHOTOS: Gov. Walz's visit to Cannon Falls' McKinley-Lundell Cherry Valley Farm
Governor Tim Walz and Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen visited the Cannon Falls farm of Danny and Mary Lundell Tuesday, March 4, to talk about how the recently instituted tarriffs on Canada and Mexico would affect Minnesota farmers. Alec Hamilton / Cannon Falls Beacon
Governor Tim Walz and Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen visited the Cannon Falls farm of Danny and Mary Lundell Tuesday, March 4, to talk about how the recently instituted tarriffs on Canada and Mexico would affect Minnesota farmers. Alec Hamilton / Cannon Falls Beacon
There are already estimates of how much impact the tariffs will have on costs for farmers.
“What they tell us, not every farmer is going to see the impact of this right away, it will depend on your operation,” Petersen continued. “But with fuel, with fertilizer, if you’re in the pork industry, if you’re exporting corn, you’re going to see $4-$8 an acre (cost increase). That’s real impacts in a time, quite frankly for the crop industry, is not great.”
Danny spoke specifically about the effect the tariffs would have on Canadian potash – also known as fertilizer potassium – which is potassium-bearing minerals used for fertilizer.
“So I’ll touch base a little bit as the Governor and Thom spoke about was the fertilizer and potash out of Canada,” Danny said. “It’s not produced here. Canadians can’t come here and produce potash. There will be a tariff on it. We need potash to raise healthier crops. It doesn’t matter if you’re big, medium or small, it is going to affect you.”
Stan cautioned against tariffs in general.
“Tariffs, there’s no winners in this as far as I can see,” he said. “I don’t see how you can hurt every sector of the economy, it’s not just going to be the ag community, every sector of the economy is going to be affected by this. It inflicts pain on everybody, for that. That’s not the solution.”
Danny piggybacked onto Stan’s comments and gave Gov. Walz a slogan he said he was going to take.
“The simple solution is be a good neighbor,” Danny stated.
Danny, Mary and Stan Lundell talk about their family farms and how both families have been in the area for well over 100 years. Alec Hamilton / Cannon Falls Beacon
In the lead up to the tariffs taking effect on March 4, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
When asked by reporters about this comment from President Trump, Mary said that increasing domestic sales like he referenced is not realistic and Stan agreed.
“That’s not realistic. We’re a global economy,” she said. “You can’t just focus on the interior, the U.S. only. That’s just not realistic in this day’s world.”
“There’s not enough market domestically, everything we produce far exceeds what the domestic market could handle,” he added.
Danny and Mary were approached about hosting Gov. Walz the day prior with about 24 hours notice.
“It worked out,” Mary said with a smile.
Danny said the agriculture industry as a whole is nervous and that it’s difficult to predict what will come next. They also said that they have not only been hearing from their neighbors in the area, but also from friends internationally who have reached out to express their concern.
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