“These are difficult times.” 

So goes the song of the same title by Willie Nelson. “Remember the good times. They’re smaller in number and easier to recall. Don’t spend too much time on the bad times. Their staggering number will be heavy as lead on your mind,” the Red Headed Stranger wrote. 

Willie’s words certainly apply in 2024. These clearly are difficult times in America and the world. This is evident nowhere more than on the American farm. Many farmers are saying these are the most difficult times they have ever faced, even more so than the farm depression of the 1980s. Commodity prices are low, input prices are high, and the weather challenges of 2024 will make achieving high yields difficult for many farmers across the Southeast.  

In a House Agriculture Committee hearing on “Financial Conditions in Farm Country” on July 23, Gaston, N.C. farmer David Dunlow, chairman of the National Cotton Council’s American Cotton Producers, testified that where he farms in North Carolina, production costs related to cotton, corn, peanuts, and soybeans are all well short of market prices. 

In his congressional testimony, Dunlow said ballooning operation costs and a seed cotton reference price that has not kept pace with inflation have eroded his equity and prevented him from securing loans from traditional farm lenders. 

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“I have never experienced a worse time in my 40 years of farming,” Dunlow testified. “In previous years, when market prices were below costs of production, growers could benefit from the commodity title to offset losses. However, that is no longer the case. The reference price established back in 2018, long before the disruptions brought by Covid, has not kept pace with inflation, rendering the farm safety net ineffective today. The result has been back-to-back years of losses on our farm, and next year could be just as bleak.” 

Dunlow testified that a farm bill is needed this year. He said a straight extension of the current farm bill is unacceptable. “An extension without additional financial support to producers only extends the misery, and many farmers like me and others across the country will not be farming next year without some sort of assistance,” he warned. 

“Growers are hanging on by a thread. I have heard from lenders across the country who have seen producer equity erode and without federal assistance this year will no longer be able to finance their growers moving forward,” Dunlow testified. 

In difficult times, farmers need the safety net the farm bill provides. The call to Congress is clear: the farm bill must be passed and signed by the president this year, preferably before the November elections. Congressional leaders need to heed the warnings of David Dunlow and make farm bill passage priority one. 

The crisis is real. Congress must act.