What is most troubling to me about the crisis in rural America is not so much the loss of revenue but the threat to a much more vital resource. When family farms are threatened, the danger is not just to the food they produce. The danger is to the people they produce as well.
Family farms are unlike any other businesses.
There is no time clock that decides when the work day begins and ends. I am sure many people wonder why, with all those risks, farmers do what they do. This year farmers are battling not only their old adversary, Mother Nature, but other challenges too. Grain and livestock prices are at their lowest levels in more than a decade. Rail system problems make it difficult simply to get grain from farm to market.