10 Biggest Issues Being Faced by Farmers in 2020 - MSfa*griculture (2024)

FAQs

What are 3 challenges farmers are facing in today's world? ›

Farmers need to deal with many problems, including how to: Cope with climate change, soil erosion and biodiversity loss.

COVID-19 Related Assistance for Family Farm Households

Farm households may be affected by the pandemic through loss of wages and benefits from off-farm jobs or off-farm businesses that supplement income from farming.

At the end of the 19th century, about a third of Americans worked in agriculture, compared to only about four percent today. After the Civil War, drought, plagues of grasshoppers, boll weevils, rising costs, falling prices, and high interest rates made it increasingly difficult to make a living as a farmer.

In 2024, aim to implement active risk management practices, obtain sufficient insurance and improve employee benefits and training to deal with the labor crunch. Continued labor shortages and rising costs for farm inputs and insurance are a few of the issues those in agribusiness must contend with in 2024.

Climate change may affect the production of maize (corn) and wheat as early as 2030 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, according to a new NASA study published in the journal, Nature Food. Maize crop yields are projected to decline 24%, while wheat could potentially see growth of about 17%.

Conclusions: The pandemic has exacerbated challenges affecting mental health and and food security among farmworkers. Interventions and prevention efforts, led by respected and trusted members of the community, should include on-the-spot supplemental income, increased mental health services, and food support services.

The agriculture business has become increasingly unstable. Financial uncertainty, physical isolation and increasingly unpredictable crop yields linked to climate change are just some of the stressors that are fueling a mental health crisis among farmers.

During the disease pandemic, the share of grocery stores and retail markets has declined; however, large quantities of fresh products on farms have been spoiled and wasted. COVID-19 has had many negative economic effects on people, leading to job losses and food insecurity, especially in low-income countries.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act helped farmers by raising the prices of crops and paying them for land not used. Roosevelt wanted farmers to reduce how much of their land they farmed on and the U.S. government paid farmers directly for the money they would have made if they farmed the vacant land.

Why were farmers so upset? ›

They contended with economic hardships born out of rapidly declining farm prices, prohibitively high tariffs on items they needed to purchase, and foreign competition. One of the largest challenges they faced was overproduction, where the glut of their products in the marketplace drove the price lower and lower.

It was difficult for farmers to get out of debt because they had to plant a lot of crops and so the price of their crops went down and this made them in debt. They had to take loans and sometimes the loans made them pay large interest rates which also put them in debt.

At that rate, 2030 would see over 840 million people suffering from undernourishment, and 2 billion by 2050. The main challenges that agriculture faces today are climate change, increased input costs, growing population, volatility, and lack of agricultural equipment.

That would mark the biggest two-year decline in net farm income by percentage since 1983, when the U.S. rural economy was caught in a major agricultural crisis. Net farm income of $116 billion in 2024 would be down 27% from the inflation-adjusted 2023 total, and would represent the largest annual decline since 2006.

Farmers face the challenge of managing water resources efficiently, driving them to adopt new sustainable irrigation practices and explore alternative water sources such as rainwater harvesting and wastewater reuse.

Most farmers deal with challenging economic conditions. You're likely “asset rich, cash poor,” or not even “asset rich” if you're just starting out without land of your own. You're also sitting in a position in the agricultural supply chain where you “buy retail and sell wholesale.”

The high cost of land and equipment has raised the bar of entry into agriculture, making it more expensive for the next generation to produce crops. Meanwhile, the average age of producers continued to climb, reaching 58.1 years in 2022.