Then in February, Mr. Prestage said, Chinese buyers called: The coronavirus outbreak was cutting into Chinese meat consumption, and they planned no further orders from Prestage until the disease came under control. As Covid-19 spread in meat plants, Prestage spent heavily on safety gear, sick pay and testing employees. Hog futures fell more than one-third over the first half of 2020, then surged back, rising 36% in September.
Prestage's hog business is on track to lose money for a third straight year, Mr. Prestage said.
Platforms in 2020
Mr. Trump, if re-elected, would push for increased farm exports to China and improved trade terms with partners like the United Kingdom and the European Union, a Trump-campaign official said. He would work with Congress to overhaul immigration and make it easier for U.S. farmers to hire immigrant workers, she said.
The USDA's Mr. Perdue said that farm income has grown despite trade battles and that farmers backed Mr. Trump's efforts to push for better terms.
"The president's style is probably not the style of many people," he said, "but the fact is he gets stuff done."
Mr. Biden has said he would scale back Mr. Trump's trade wars and enlist allied countries in a front against China's practices. He has said he would double government-loan sizes for beginning farmers and develop regionalized supply deals between farmers and schools, hospitals and other government institutions, providing farmers new markets for crops, produce and meat.
He has outlined a plan to pay farmers for sequestering carbon in soil, and like Mr. Trump, has pledged to expand ethanol and rural broadband access.
"What's envisioned is creating additional market opportunities," said Tom Vilsack, USDA secretary under the Obama administration, who helped craft Mr. Biden's rural plan. Even a modest number of farmers and other rural voters backing Mr. Biden could be meaningful in swing states, he said.
Howard Hill, 76, who raises hogs, cattle and crops near Cambridge, Iowa, said Mr. Trump's trade fights were necessary to ensure fair play, and he praised the administration's moves to roll back environmental regulations. "Overall," he said, "I'd say ag is probably in better shape today than it was."
If Mr. Biden is elected, Mr. Hill said, he worries about higher estate taxes.
Biden aides have said he would support returning to the estate-tax structure in place in 2009 before changes to the law. That would lower the exemption and raise the rate. Mr. Biden also has proposed changing capital-gains rules in ways that could require tax payments on appreciated assets upon death, instead of the income-tax-free inheritance that happens now.
Mr. Prestage worries Mr. Biden would give priority to environmentalism over agriculture and business. On social issues and law enforcement, he said, he worries Mr. Biden may follow more-liberal Democrats, whom he sees drifting further from his views on personal accountability.
"You're entitled to have what you earn," he said, "but not entitled to take it from your neighbor who worked harder than you."
Mr. Biden has pledged not to raise direct taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year, a campaign spokesman said, and his policies on climate change would help protect farmers' crops from environmental harm.
In speeches, Mr. Biden has distinguished between protesting and rioting, and said looters should be prosecuted.
The Trump administration will likely pay $45 billion directly to farmers this year, according to University of Missouri agricultural economists. But Mr. Prestage said government payment caps meant little of his losses would be covered.
In August, he was reviewing plans to build a turkey plant in South Carolina -- a safer gamble than pork, he said, because turkey is less export-reliant.
And Mr. Trump remains the safer 2020 bet, he said: "I'll take the good with the bad."
--Richard Rubin contributed to this article.
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-19-20 1204ET
