This is the latest installment of Harvest Public Media’s Field Notes, in which we talk about important issues related to food production.
Farmers received some gloomy news from the US Department of Agriculture earlier this month. As Harvest Public Media’s Luke Runyon reports in this week's Field Notes, the USDA is predicting that lower corn prices are here to stay.
The Department of Agriculture is also beginning to release figures from its 2012 Census of Agriculture. The latest census shows there is a slight uptick in the number of young farmers, but not enough to halt the average age of the American farmer from climbing. Harvest Public Media’s Grant Gerlock reports that this has got residents in many rural communities worried.