Kansas Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts are calling attention to a longstanding trade barrier for Kansas wheat farmers with a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

The senators say an unfair trade condition exists concerning U.S. wheat exports to Brazil.

According to the senators, Brazil agreed to establish a 750,000 metric ton duty-free, tariff-rate quota for wheat as part of an agreement reached during the Uruguay Round trade talks.

“However, since that time, Brazil has failed to live up to its commitment to the detriment of U.S. farmers. Rather than open the TRQ, Brazil continues to apply a 10 percent tariff on U.S. wheat, with the option of increasing the rate to as high as the 55 percent World Trade Organization bound rate,” the letter reads.

Kansas is the largest wheat-producing state in the U.S., even though acreage has fallen along with prices in the last several years.

In 2018, USDA estimated Kansas wheat production at 277 million bushels, a drop of 17% from 2017. Kansas farmers planted 7.7 million acres to winter wheat in 2017 for the 2018 harvest. Statewide yields were about 38 bushels per acre, a 10-bushel drop from the previous year.

USDA Agricultural Statistics Service estimates that Kansas farmers seeded only 7.2 million acres to wheat last fall, though not all the decrease was a matter of choice.

An extremely late, wet fall harvest made getting corn, soybeans and sorghum out of the field in time to plant wheat impossible.

That reduction in production, however, is more than offset by the backlog of wheat sitting in elevators and bunkers awaiting sales.

That growing export market, the Kansas senators contend in their letter to Lighthizer, is the best way to get rid of the surplus.

“As Kansas farmers continue to face low prices and declining revenues, it is critical that Congress and the Administration work to grow export markets for U.S. agricultural commodities,” the letter reads. “By challenging Brazil’s failure to implement the wheat TRQ — including launching a trade enforcement action at the WTO if necessary — you have the opportunity to increase wheat exports to the country.”