Cate Havstad-Casad wrote a piece I wanted to share with you all: Our good friend, writer, agricultural producer, hat maker, mother, and more wrote this piece. It really spoke to me! Enjoy: 

“We are living the realities of being a family farm in this era, it’s easy to forget that 99% of the rest of the population doesn’t understand what we in agriculture understand is unfolding. These truth impacts us all and will only continue to get more palpable. Where do I begin?

Last October at the Regenerative Food System Investment Forum, two leaders who are deeply grounded in trends in capital, policy and producer realities used their time as key speakers on stage to sound the alarm and ground the conference in truth. Zachary Ducheneaux, former Head Administrator for the Farm Service Agency, and a rancher from South Dakota who grew up the child of the 80s Farm Crisis, he got very real about the financial suffocation plaguing our nation’s producers causing them to survive year to year relying on annual operating lines and termed loans that are frankly too short term for the long term investments land and agriculture are. Producers are largely covering overhead and servicing debts, but leaving little in the bank for savings, for personal investments, for emergency savings. Chasing the interest rates on the debt in the cycle year-to-year keeps them trapped. And, because crop loss insurance remains the archaic system it is, the producers are forced into growing the same 9 commodity crops that keep them tethered to the cycle of the commodity volatility > insurance > debt > insecure markets.

Producers are starving while they exist to nourish 99% of the population. This is not by chance, or bad luck, or ignorance, this is a result of systematic control and consolidation and it’s gotten worse this last year.

The tariff wars started by this administration caused the loss of purchasing contracts for many of our nation’s farmers. There was no plan in place to create security or off-take agreements for the crops the administration KNEW would be impacted by the tariffs. The level of fear and stress induced onto the 1% of the population growing crops in this nation is something I can’t put into words. I can tell you we have felt fear and grief of not knowing if we would make it another year as a farm, so I can empathize with what the commodity growers felt, but the scale of their fear I can’t comprehend. With thousands of acres of crops, millions in debts, many of them a part of many generations of family legacy in farming. With the swoop of an executive order everything was sent into chaos.

You may have seen headlines about the $12 Billion relief package this administration announced for these growers recently. That doesn’t come close to covering the losses. Estimates are varied across sources but I’ve seen $35-$44 Billion as estimated losses for the 9 commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts, etc.) If you want to read more from a thoughtful, poised and informed source on these issues, Zachary Ducheneaux wrote this one titled “A ‘bridge’ to where?” and he has a great collection of articles on his LinkedIn.

Tim Crosby, an investor and food systems architect working with producers and business builders globally, had a very sobering reality check explaining what was coming with the farm crisis induced by 2025. These conditions that were engineered will lead to many foreclosures across the nation. When those farms go up for auction, they will not go on the public market. Instead, there are pre-selected buyers already arranged for much of the farmland purchases.

What has started to truly unravel in front of our eyes is another wave of what could be the largest consolidation of farmland in the United States. Again, this is not by accident, bad luck, natural disaster… This is engineered.

You will be hard pressed to find someone more idealistic or optimistic than I, but this year I’ve struggled more than any year to see the light through this all. I’ve felt the frustration observing fellow humankind continue to praise convenience and ease above all else. I’ve struggled to control my facial expressions when I hear someone comment on the price of food grown by a local family farm. I’ve wanted to snarl back, “great, do it yourself.” Investors who cosplay as impact investors in the space and fail to step up to the plate for truly catalytic projects in agriculture and instead spend years dragging producers along, I see you.

I know anger at the average consumer is unfair, everyone is feeling the squeeze and everyone has been conditioned to expect a click-to-order-show-up-at-your-door-the-next-day model of consumerism. But also, it’s time to wake the fuck up before it’s too late.

Perhaps I’m losing my patience, perhaps I’ll get it back. The stakes are so high right now, I guess I’m ok speaking with directness on the urgency of awakening needed.

When COVID shutdowns hit and the very short-lived disruption to supply chains occurred, local farm CSA subscriptions etc skyrocketed. Since 2021 the retainment is minimal across the board, everyone I talk to experienced the similar spikes and falls in local commitment. It would seem everyone went back to life as usual as our food system has gotten even more severely consolidated and compromised.

When the next disruption occurs, there will be less farmers, there will be less resilience. It’s not hypothetical, it’s happened.

I guess what you’re witnessing is my loss of innocence, idealism and ignorance. I’m done watching producers starve while living to nourish everyone else.”