Two big features on how small rural farms are no longer financially viable

One is from Alana Semuels in this week's Time Magazine, and the other is from the New York Times Sunday paper, compliments of journalist Corey Kilgannon.  Semuels' headline is, "'They're Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map':  Small American Farmers are Nearing Extinction," and Kilgannon's is "After 240 Years and 7 Generations, Forced to Sell the Family Farm."  I'm providing a short excerpt from each here, starting with the Time piece, which features Mary and John Rieckmann, aged 79 and 80 respectively, who farm 45 dairy cattle in central Wisconsin:

The Rieckmanns are about $300,000 in debt, and bill collectors are hounding them about the feed bill and a repayment for a used tractor they bought to keep the farm going. But it’s harder than ever to make any money, much less pay the debt, Mary Rieckmann says, in the yellow-wallpapered kitchen of the sagging farmhouse where she lives with her husband, John, and two of their seven children. The Rieckmanns receive about $16 for every 100 pounds of milk they sell, a 40 percent decrease from six years back. There are weeks where the entire milk check goes towards the $2,100 monthly mortgage payment. Two bill collectors have taken out liens against the farm. “What do you do when you you’re up against the wall and you just don’t know which way to turn?” Rieckmann says, as her ancient fridge begins to hum.

A compelling data point:

John recently brought two calves to the stock market and got $20 for one and $30 for another—two years ago, those calves would have brought in $300 to $400 each.

Semuels also takes up the issue of farmer suicide, which is the topic of this recent story and some prior posts here on Legal Ruralism (with parallels to Australia).

Here's the lede from the New York Times feature, dateline Durham, New York, population, 2,725:

Farmer Frank hobbled into the house, cane in hand. 

“Sow got out of her pen, had to chase her down,” said Farmer Frank — Frank Hull, 71 — whose body, ravaged from decades of heavy manual work, is no longer built for chasing sows. 

For half a century, he and his wife, Sherry, 67, have run their 260-acre farm here in the upper Catskills, some two hours north of New York City. 

Known as Hull-O Farms, it has been in Mr. Hull’s family since his forebear, John Hull, founded it some 240 years and seven generations ago. 

It is one of the oldest farms in the country continuously owned and run by the same family. But that lineage is about to end.

Both stories are chock full of interesting and compelling data points about the trends, including the sale of farm land for housing developments and so forth.  The New York Times story also talks about the Hulls' engagement in agri-tourism.

And coastal elites wonder why rural folks are angry enough to support the likes of Trump.