As a farmer myself, I know that farming has never been easy – on any scale, in any year. But today, Maine’s farmers face a perfect storm of pressure points that make building a stable life off the land exceptionally challenging.
Among the suite of complexities Maine farmers now face are unpredictable growing conditions. Producers have long relied on steady weather patterns to effectively manage their lands, but with a warmer world comes increasingly severe and frequent flooding, drought and untimely frosts and thaws that threaten Maine harvests. Last summer’s drought, among the worst on record, resulted in millions of dollars of crop losses among Maine farmers.
Economic uncertainty wrought by federal political decisions falls on top of these ecological pressures, compounding the financial strain on Maine producers. The war in Iran sent the cost of critical inputs like fuel and fertilizer skyrocketing just in time for spring planting, when farmers’ need is high and income low. These wartime price hikes hit Maine farmers in the wake of an exceptionally costly and uncertain year, as federal funding cuts and retaliatory tariffs threatened to drive up the price tag of infrastructure improvements and necessities like grain and fertilizer.
Together, environmental challenges, economic uncertainty, soaring land values and development pressures are pushing much of Maine’s fertile farmland out of production, particularly as our agricultural workforce ages. Farmland conversion is occurring faster than conservation can respond, with more than 82,000 acres of agricultural land falling out of production between 2017 and 2022.
Our working lands and its cultivators are the driving force behind Maine’s local economies, food security and cultural heritage. In the face of so many overlapping challenges, they deserve our investment. This session, LD 2094 represented an important recognition of that fact.
LD 2094 proposed a $45 million bond to build up our agricultural, food and forest economies, giving farmers and foresters the resources they need to thrive in 21st-century conditions. The package included funding to help farmers build resilience by improving soil health and protecting crops from drought. It would have directed funding to Maine’s Working Farmland Access Protection Program, leveraging voluntary, market-based conservation easements to ensure Maine’s most productive farmland remains available for commercial agriculture. It sought to ensure farmers can afford to make the key infrastructure investments needed to keep cultivating their land and feeding their communities.
Ultimately, LD 2094 did not garner the breadth of support it needed to pass, held back by disagreements on the bill’s funding mechanism. Still, the conversation it sparked in Augusta reflected a firm belief across party lines that agriculture is infrastructure, and it deserves our investment in a time of stark need. The 133rd Legislature will bring another critical opportunity to meaningfully act on this consensus to uplift our food economy and the hardworking people who keep it running every day.