Farm Issues

Almost 90% of the $540bn in global subsidies given to farmers every year are “harmful”, a startling UN report has found.

This agricultural support damages people’s health, fuels the climate crisis, destroys nature and drives inequality by excluding smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, according to the UN agencies.

Factory farming operations have swallowed up much of the U.S. farming economy, and independent farmers warn that we’re not prepared for the future they have in store for us.

A proposed concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Burnett County, Wisconsin, is slated to house 26,000 hogs and produce millions of gallons of liquid manure every year. Residents fear the irreparable damage an operation of that size could do to their air, land, and waterways, as well as to their property values

Jesse Frost and his wife Hannah Crabtree have been farming together since 2011, when they met working as apprentices on a small organic farm in southern Kentucky. Eventually, they started their own small market garden operation nearby, Rough Draft Farm, where they started experimenting with cutting down on tillage a few years later. By 2017, they had gone completely no-till.

Grocery store beef prices are rising. The rancher’s share is falling. And the companies that dominate the highly-concentrated meatpacking industry are making a killing.