Extremes can be tough to handle, to wrap your head around. They can be good, and they can be bad. And one extreme in one direction most often prompts a counterbalance extreme in the other direction to balance out the seesaw, so to speak.

The weather this growing season in the Southeast has been one of the most extreme in recent memory. Some may say that’s nothing new. Extreme seems to be the new normal for weather. By that as it may, planting weather started out extremely good in early April and then May brought heavy rain to much of the lower Southeast, postponing row crop planting for weeks. Farmers responded, adjusted and got into fields when they could.

Early in the summer, drought ravaged the Carolinas’ corn crops, which didn’t recover. August turned off dry with record triple-digit heat across the region. Extreme.

Then the storms came, starting with Debby, then Helene and then Milton, bringing multiple catastrophic extreme punches to the region, which left many staggering today and will possibly for a generation. People responded extremely to help others, including family, neighbors, friends, Extension and private and public organizations. The work continues.

Even before the storms and weather, Southeast farmers faced extreme financial headwinds, crunched between falling crop prices and soaring input costs. The cost-price squeeze on farmers has snowballed into the largest two-year decline in crop cash receipts in history, according to recent data collected by the Texas A&M University Agricultural and Food Policy Center.

Related:After Helene, initial ag assessments grim

Farmers needed then, and still do need, a real-world, up-to-date farm bill with adequate safety net provisions. In September, the ag industry took to the Hill. All lanes of the American agricultural highway merged to drive a message to Washington. Farmers facing dire economic situations need a new farm bill and financial assistance. That unified voice was an extreme move and a good thing.

More than 300 national, regional and state groups representing the breadth of U.S. agriculture sent a signed letter to congressional leaders. Many members of the groups, including major commodity groups from throughout the South and Southeast, followed the letter with a coordinated fly-in trip to Washington to bring farmers and ag lenders together with lawmakers and staff to discuss the issue face to face.

As we speak, people who care in Washington are working to get a new farm bill a dance card for the Congressional floor and a seat at the new president’s table for a signing party. The chances of getting a new farm bill sooner rather than has likely improved after Nov. 5. But it still might take an extreme push to make it all happen.

Related:Will election results deliver a farm bill this year?

Extreme times call for extreme actions, which are best done by reasonable and sincere people.

No matter the times or the storms, we all witness people doing extreme things to help other people, and people do that every day. That extreme is the best one.