According to the USDA, Louisiana lost two-thousand farms between 2017 and 2022, but the amount of land used to farm has stayed about the same. Neil Melancon with the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation says smaller farms are finding it impossible to remain economically viable, so we are just seeing bigger farms.
“Input costs have gone up that is fuel, fertilizer and other costs and other costs. In some cases, some fertilizer jumped 300% over a single year that’s the sort of difficulty that many farms can’t account for in a single season.”
There were eight million acres of farmland in 2017, compared to 7.97 million in 2022.
Melancon says family farms help drive the economy, but rice farming has been very difficult over the last decade. He says the average age of a farmer is 59 and they age out of the industry, which has a ripple effect.
“That is in many rural areas this loss of farmers are loss of equipment, a loss of customers, a loss of many of the staples that rural economies depend on.”
Melancon says a drop in farmers statewide means education and awareness decreases.
“That’s bad long term in terms of our ability to understand the supply chain. As we saw during COVID, the fragility of that supply chain and its impact on all of us day to day.”
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