MONTGOMERY – Farmers across the Hudson Valley, the state and nation are all facing tough economic times with global uncertainty led by policies from the Trump administration.
Dozens of farmers gathered at the Regional Food Bank in Montgomery on Thursday to hear from State Agricultural Commissioner Richard Ball.
He said farmers are facing many challenges from the price of fertilizer to the cost of transporting their products.
“I think we are all in a challenging space. There’s no shortage of things to worry about, and I think that is what we are seeing in our communities, certainly on our farms,” he said. “I get around the state quite a lot. I get to a lot of our farms, our food manufacturing facilities. There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty, global uncertainty, and every state has uncertainty, and certainly in the farm community with the concern around inflow costs, immigration, markets, tariffs, you name it.”
Orange County apple farmer Jeff Crist agreed that there are many challenges facing farms “and not every farmer is going to survive. But it’s very challenging in the agricultural community.”
Comments