Extreme weather wiped out billions in crops last year — but most federal aid may end up going to the wrong farms.
As Earth heats up, the growing frequency and intensity of disasters like catastrophic storms and heat waves are becoming a mounting problem for the people who grow the planet’s food. Warming is no longer solely eroding agricultural productivity and food security in distant nations or arid climates. It’s throttling production in the United States.
Farmers and ranchers across the country lost at least $20.3 billion in crops and rangeland to extreme weather last year, according to a new Farm Bureau report that crowned the 2024 hurricane season “one of the most destructive in U.S. history” and outlined a long list of other climate-fueled impacts.
