CLIMATE FINANCE

Farmers and Ranchers Are Getting Absolutely Destroyed

Their misfortune will cause food prices to spike.

The megadrought is drying up farmland across the country. (Photo by George Becker from Pexels)

Farming has always been a difficult job, but the past several years have been an absolute nightmare.

Even before the pandemic, the industry endured a three-year trade war with China that depressed commodity prices and drove many farmers to unsustainable levels of debt, forcing them to go bankrupt.

The pandemic hit at the tail-end of that saga, shutting down restaurants and cafeterias, and spiking food demand at grocery stores. The agricultural supply chain couldn’t pivot fast enough, and vegetables were left to rot in fields across the country.

There was a brief respite this spring, when China once again opened its doors to US farm products. The record exports cast a hopeful light on an otherwise dire situation, albeit one with much hand wringing about being overly dependent on a single customer.

That hope, however, was dashed as the spring turned to summer, intensifying the relentless megadrought plaguing most of the western United States.

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