MINNEAPOLIS — Michael Bloomberg concedes without hesitation he has much to learn about agriculture, and that's one of the reasons his first visit to Minnesota as a presidential candidate was to a farm.
The former New York City mayor stopped at the Johnson Family Farm near Wells, in the southern part of the state, for a tour and discussion about the challenges rural America faces.
"He was very easy to talk to, very inquisitive about our operation," Darin Johnson, the fourth-generation farmer who led the tour, told KARE.
The visit was coordinated through the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, which is a nonpartisan industry group. Johnson, who serves a secretary of that organization, said it's important for farm groups to reach out to candidates of all parties.
"We feel really lucky to be able to have that conversation with somebody who really isn’t familiar with agriculture."
Bloomberg said he was impressed at how much technology was built into the farm operation, and the sophistication of the implements that rely on GPS and Internet broadband for navigation and precision control of chemical application.
"I want to better understand rural America. I come from a city but you’re the backbone of America," Bloomberg remarked. "We eat and live based on what you do, and I think it’s easy for us in living in big cities to forget about the rest of the world."
The Johnsons farm about 5,000 acres of land in the area along I-90 west of Albert Lea, including their own land and acreage they farm for others. They grow corn and soybeans and sell seed for those crops.
The conversation naturally turned to the conversation of tariffs and how they've adversely affected the Minnesota farm economy and growers who had come to rely on China as a trading partner.
Johnson said that payments farmers received from the federal government kept many in business that would've otherwise failed, but they'd always prefer trade over aid.
"We can’t have that two-year gap in there where we go from China buying 40 million metric tons of soybeans from us, to virtually nothing," Johnson told Bloomberg.
The New York presidential hopeful said trade is always better when nations are getting along better.
"All these battles with China -- it’s not good for us," Bloomberg asserted.
"All of those tariffs that are put in place, American consumers are paying for it. It’s not China that’s getting hurt. It's us."
Bloomberg's schedule didn't allow him to take questions from the local and national media that had come to Wells to cover the event. His campaign said he's taking this state very seriously.
"Mike is introducing himself to democratic primary voters across the country. They don’t know who Mike Bloomberg is," James Anderson, a senior campaign adviser, told reporters.
"Voters know he’s a billionaire. They know he was a good mayor of New York, but they don’t know he comes from very humble roots. His father never made more than $6,000 a year."
Anderson said that in addition to Bloomberg's current advertising blitz in Minnesota media markets, the campaign will set up a state office and at least eight regional field offices here.