🇫🇷Menon Baptiste 🇫🇷👩‍👧‍👧👨‍👧‍👧

“I’m paying $7 a gallon here for diesel fuel.” “My combine holds 140 gallons.” “That’s right at $1,000 to fill up my combine.” For farmer John Boyd Jr., those numbers illustrate a much bigger problem in American agriculture. Farmers are paying more for the fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, equipment, and other inputs they need to produce our food, while concentrated markets leave them with little power over the prices they pay or receive. When those costs keep climbing, the consequences eventually reach beyond the farm and ripple throughout the entire food system. Boyd has been farming for decades and believes, “This is one of the worst economic times in history for America’s farmers.” That should be a warning about the direction of American agriculture. If producing food becomes increasingly expensive while farmers have less control over their markets, we risk losing more independent farms and concentrating even more of our food system in the hands of the biggest players. @JWBoydNBFA