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As farmers, we are seeing tip-of-iceberg type problems in our local farming groups and agricultural support organizations from the loss of contracted grants, technical support staffing, and frozen funds at the federal level.
We want to share the down-in-the-dirt picture with you a little, for understanding what is happening to farms, and to ask for help.
Because we want to do our work, and this bull is getting in our way. So I am going to do my best to make this as uplifting as possible, rather amusing at least when not, and interspersed with edgy near-swears.
See if you can come away with which government acronym is the sexiest, in my estimation.
To start with an uplifting bit, we have seen positive change (frozen funds released to our farm) coming from public pressure already—so putting your voice to it can actually matter. Read on for how to do that and how to support farmers now. We are also putting our voice to it, here and by being one of eight farms and non-profits on the national Earthjustice lawsuit to unfreeze Inflation Reduction Act funds for food and ag.
Wherever you stand politically, I hope you will listen to me as a farmer saying these three things:
1. Existing signed contracts from congressionally-approved money and programs must not be struck down at the whim of any incoming administration.
This is an illegal violation of the separation of powers that wastes time and money invested on all sides, puts jobs, services and businesses at serious risk, and undermines future trust in government programs.
2. Climate change does not go away with the stroke of a federal pen.
3. Neither does the need for food relief.
Farmers are in the mud dealing with more erratic weather annually, and right now is the time to be making informed improvements as a matter of survival for farms across the country as weather trends worsen. Eaters take notice.
I keep using the words “climate change,” but please substitute “more erratic weather” as needed. I am mostly not kidding—we don’t need words as barriers.
For Ryan, climate resilience and response is like a full-time job on top of the regular at our farm this winter. He’s been lining up projects over the past couple years to tackle big things that will help our farm weather the bad weather and be part of the solution by sequestering carbon. It takes a long time.
This is Ryan’s nights and weekends away from the children—working on this stuff and the Granby farm fire recovery plan (which is also ridiculously affected by the situation).
The funding freezes and staffing cuts are now impeding our ability to implement all that work already put in:
- climate resilient practices
- improved irrigation
- rebuilding from the Granby barn fire
- installing renewable energy
- providing food to schools and food bank partnerships in our wholesale program
- and more
And we are just one farm trying to get stuff done. I can attest that there are a lot more of us.
And we want to just do our dirty jobs.
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