‘Devastation,’ Land O’Lakes CEO Calls Situation for Many U.S. Farmers

Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford wanted to stress the urgency of the situation. “What is happening right now is devastation,” Ford said of the struggles of many American farmers.

Ford was one of the featured speakers at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Fortune began the series in 1998 to highly some of the most influential women in business.

Ford has served as CEO of Land O’Lakes, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based agricultural cooperative, since 2018. She grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and started working in agriculture when she was 12 and experienced the rigors of farming by de-tasseling corn.

Beth Ford Laid Out Struggling Farm Finances

As she addressed a D.C. crowd, she wanted the audience to understand that she was not exaggerating how tough it is for many family farmers right now when she called the situation, “devastation.”

“That’s not too strong of a word,” she said. “On some farms now, you've had land value increase over time. And that means they can collateralize operating loans. And so, some of them can get loans, operating loans to plan for next year,” Ford explained.

Then she added, “but some of them will be challenged, and they will move into a risk of bankruptcy.”

Farm Struggles Spread Throughout Rural Communities

What gets too often overlooked by those outside of agriculture is the financial ripple effect that can tear through America’s rural towns when farmers’ incomes plummet.

“And it's not just what's happening on the farm,” Ford said, “that means what's happening in their communities, right? What's happening at the hardware store? What's happening at the school, etc.” And I think it's important that we all understand rural America,” she said.

Ford laid out the numbers that show the work ethic, commitment to service, pride, and patriotism that run deep in rural America:

--19% of the population

--44% of the military

Ford continued, “When you don't have income, when you don't have revenue, rural hospitals have shut down. Rural banks have shut down. Seventy percent of the counties in America that index as food insecure are in rural America, housing crisis, etc.”

RELATED: Like Beth Ford, this state legislator in Washington believes that the Trump administration needs to make sure that the U.S. still allows immigrants to come into the country to work in agriculture.