"USDA’s staffing cuts, scuttled conservation programs, and misdirected crop insurance are hitting farmers hard."
"As a teen in the 1960s, Ray McCormick shouldered responsibility for managing his family’s 2,600-acre farm in southern Indiana. His father had taken an insurance job, crushed by major crops losses from year-after-year flooding in Knox County.
“He said he’d starve to death if he didn’t do something else,” McCormick said.
McCormick stuck with the land, and now, at age 71, he grows corn, wheat, soybeans, peaches, and cover crops like rye grass, turnips, and clover. He also raises 40 head of cattle and runs a duck-hunting business on wetlands he restored.
Flooding is an ongoing a challenge for his farm, nestled between the White and Wabash rivers in the flood-prone Mississippi River basin—and climate change is making it worse. Intensive rains magnify flooding or leave fields too wet for much of the season, lowering yields. For McCormick and the many other American farmers who now face extreme precipitation, this adds stress to an already difficult industry. And the scant resources available to help producers adapt to climate change are only shrinking under the Trump administration."
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