Agricultural policy has gotten caught up in culture wars that have snarled other aspects of American life.
Food inflation has shoppers anxious and quick to blame producers for high prices. Meanwhile, the prices of fertilizers and pesticides have steeply increased in the past few years, as have labor and transportation.
Many farmers have doubled down on time-honored traditions, keeping a focus on growth and scale and leaving terms like “climate-smart” and “regenerative” practices to activists and politicians. Some have embraced radical new technologies to reinvent the very definition of a farm. And others look nervously to the future, trying to chart a path to profitability and wondering if their children will, or should, take over the land when they’re gone.
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Then there are those farmers who see the way things used to be as well as the challenges ahead in a world with more people, less water, less weather stability and more regulation.
They say they feel pulled in different directions, wanting to heed the call to be resilient in the face of climate change but struggling to see a way to do that while producing enough to stay profitable.
