Rural America Needs Help Farm Bureau Stresses

Farmers and ranchers continue to struggle with a difficult farm economy. Faith Parum, economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the latest estimates show shortfalls in the multiple billions of dollars in farm country. She added there are several reasons these challenges continue to increase.

“The first is farmers are price takers, not price makers," Parum stressed. "So, whatever the market price is, they have to take. When input costs are low, which is our second issue, that works out pretty well for them. However, we've seen skyrocketing input costs that have really made it hard for the balance sheet to align.”

AFBF Says More Needs To Be Done

Even after recent federal help bolstered the rural economy, Parum said the farming community needs more assistance.

“We're very thankful for all the work Congress did in HR 1 that increased funding to a lot of our very vital farm safety net programs like ARC, PLC, and crop insurance," Parum said. "But farmers are seeing that first payment this October, and we all know that there has been great global disruptions across the farm economy that have made those losses even worse.”

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