09/28/2026
I DON’T THINK AMERICA IS RUNNING OUT OF FARMERS. I THINK WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF PEOPLE WHO CAN AFFORD TO KEEP FARMING.
There’s a difference.
And I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.
Because people will tell you agriculture isn’t going anywhere.
Somebody will always farm.
Somebody will always raise cattle.
We have to eat, so there will always be farmers.
But that’s not actually how this works.
People don’t keep farming simply because America needs food.
They have to be able to survive doing it.
A farmer can love the land with everything in him and still lose it.
A rancher can spend his entire life building a herd and still reach a point where the numbers tell him to sell.
A kid can grow up dreaming about taking over the family farm and eventually realize he’d have to go hundreds of thousands—or millions—of dollars into debt just to get started.
Love doesn’t make the land payment.
It doesn’t buy diesel.
It doesn’t replace a tractor.
It doesn’t pay the veterinarian.
It doesn’t buy hay during a drought.
It doesn’t rebuild fence after a fire.
It doesn’t pay property taxes.
And it sure as hell doesn’t make cattle stop finding the most expensive possible way to hurt themselves. 😂
That’s the part of agriculture people don’t always see.
They see a farmer sitting on hundreds of acres and think:
Look at everything they own.
The farmer looks at those same acres and sees taxes, fencing, fertilizer, equipment, maintenance, insurance and a responsibility that never clocks out.
They see a $100,000 tractor.
The farmer sees a piece of equipment he may still be paying for ten years from now.
They see cattle bringing thousands of dollars.
The rancher remembers everything it cost to produce that animal before a dollar ever came back.
And this isn’t me saying farmers should be guaranteed a profit.
That’s business.
Sometimes you make money.
Sometimes you don’t.
Lord knows agriculture will teach you that lesson quickly. 😂
What worries me is what happens when the math stops working for too many people at the same time.
Because farms don’t always disappear with some big dramatic announcement.
Sometimes Grandpa dies.
Dad keeps it going awhile.
The kids love the farm but can’t afford to buy their siblings out.
So the cattle sell.
Then the equipment.
Then the land.
Maybe another farmer buys it.
That’s a win.
But sometimes nobody farming can afford it.
And the highest bidder doesn’t need a pasture.
A few years later somebody drives by and says,
“Didn’t there used to be cows there?”
Yep.
There did.
And there’s another part nobody talks about enough:
We don’t only lose the land when that happens.
We lose knowledge.
How to read a cow that’s about to calve.
How to tell when grass is ready to graze.
How to work cattle without tearing everything up.
How to put up hay.
How to mend fence.
How to read weather without looking at an app.
How to keep an animal alive at 2 a.m. when the veterinarian is an hour away.
You can buy land.
You can buy cattle.
You can buy equipment.
You cannot order generations of knowledge from Amazon and have it sitting on the porch tomorrow morning.
That knowledge takes years to build.
And one generation deciding agriculture isn’t worth the struggle can break a chain that took generations to create.
That’s why I don’t think the conversation about American agriculture should only happen when grocery prices get high.
By the time food becomes the problem everybody notices, we may have ignored the people producing it for decades.
I don’t want Americans afraid of their food supply.
I want them aware of it.
There’s a difference.
I want people to understand that an abundant food system isn’t something we inherited permanently.
Every generation has to maintain it.
That means keeping land productive.
Keeping processing available.
Keeping markets competitive.
Keeping young people interested.
And most importantly…
making sure there is still some reasonable path for the next generation to actually make a living doing this.
Because America doesn’t need farmers simply because farming is nostalgic.
We don’t need cattle in pastures because they make pretty pictures at sunset.
We need agriculture because 340 million people are going to wake up tomorrow hungry.
And the next day.
And the day after that.
Somebody has to keep producing that food.
My concern isn’t whether America knows how to farm.
We’ve got some of the best farmers and ranchers in the world.
My concern is whether we’re building a country where enough of them can afford to keep doing it.
Because the most dangerous words we can say about our food supply might just be:
“Somebody else will grow it.”
Eventually you run out of somebody elses.
🇺🇸🌾🐂
America Feeds America.
