Growing in Alignment
Charts+
There are many storylines in farming and food business and policy, and charts and other materials will be added here periodically to highlight a few of those.
Are we, those in food and agriculture, focused on the right risks?
One of the things I’ve been reflecting on lately is how there are abundant tools and trainings available for certain risks that farmers face, and not nearly any tools at all for other risks.
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Why do we care about having approaches to risk in the first place? For me, it’s in part so that our farms and farmers can be resilient in the face of challenging circumstances. And you don’t have to watch the news or ride around in farm country long to know that challenging circumstances are upon us.
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How many papers and reports and hundreds of thousands of hours of research have been directed at managing crop price risk for producers, compared to a host of other risks that producers could face in any given year? Not that price risk isn’t an important risk to manage, but only focusing on the risks that we already have the tools available for seems to have the potential to dramatically distort the understanding of risk for both farmers and agricultural professions, overly emphasizing certain risks because we have some tools to manage them, and underemphasizing a multitude of other risks where we haven’t yet developed many tools.
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Every farm situation is unique, but how many risks are there that are potentially just as disruptive as variations in price? The one that comes to mind as a quintessential example is the risks of major transitions in the farm business. For many farms, ignoring what will happen at the juncture of transition from one generation to the next, or to a new farm business owner, could dwarf the impact of deciding acreage rotations well or earning a few extra cents per bushel on the price of corn through good risk management. And sure, this issue of transition planning gets talked about, but on many farms, it’s still swept under the table and avoided.[1]
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There are other examples of these risks that we still haven’t learned to manage well: A livestock operation that relies on feed from a mill without adequate backup power generators in the event of a hurricane. Drought that devastates crops and leaves fields and farmers spirits in poor shape, even when a portion of the crop loss might have insurance coverage. The shifting tides and instability of global geopolitics. And that’s just to name a few examples from this month.
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An example unnamed, minimally-managed risk that’s come up recently on my family’s diversified, direct-marketing farm in North Carolina is one that came as a complete surprise. In the midst of a busy summer harvest season, within days of the start of the first real crop of peaches we’ve gotten off of 7-year-old peach trees, Facebook decided that our farm page was in violation of its Community Standards for “impersonating a business” and unpublished the business Facebook page, leaving it completely unviewable to the customers who have been following us for over a decade. Mind you, the farm is a physical business with a landline phone, barns and fields viewable from satellite imagery, and we’ve been farming here since 1885. Whew. The first appeal of the decision was denied, and now 4 weeks later, the page is still under another review. We’re managing with a host of other avenues for connecting with customers that luckily were already in place. But it highlights this: There is risk in places we’ve never focused on as a source of risk, and for many farmers, these will be challenges that they will increasingly face in coming years.
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It also highlights another question for those working in and adjacent to agriculture: Instead of making slight refinements to the excellent tools we already have to manage certain risks, how do we provide leadership in supporting farm businesses that are able to withstand, navigate, and flourish through the unexpected the coming years will certainly bring? And how do we ourselves take a step back, examine the totality of a farm and its interwoveness with land and community, and start to observe more holistically how to identify what the risks are to the operation’s overall wellness, and how we can support farmers and their farms in being resilient and better navigating the risks that are under-identified and undermanaged.
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If you have thoughts on the ways that we can broaden the conversation on risk and resilience for farmers, I'd love to hear them.
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--7/15/24