Rooted in the Soil, Squeezed by the Storm: Why North Carolina's Family Farms Need a Champion Now
Photo: Pieter Aertsen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
North Carolina agriculture has always demanded resilience. What it has never demanded — until recently — is the ability to absorb catastrophe after catastrophe with no margin left to spare. Across the Coastal Plain and the foothills alike, the family farms that built this state's economy and identity are being tested by forces far beyond their control: intensifying hurricanes, erratic growing seasons, input costs that climb faster than commodity prices, and buyers who grow larger while growers grow fewer.
Kelly believes that when our farmers struggle, all of North Carolina struggles. And Kelly believes the answer is not sympathy — it is structural change.
A Climate That No Longer Follows the Rules
Talk to farmers in Duplin, Robeson, or Lenoir counties and the same story surfaces again and again. The storms arrive wetter and slower. Floodwaters linger where they never used to reach, drowning topsoil and contaminating fields with runoff. In the same season, other corners of the state face stretches of drought that crack the ground and stunt pasture grass.
This is not an abstraction. It is the difference between a viable harvest and a lost year. For a farm operating on thin margins — as most small and mid-sized operations do — a single bad season can erase a decade of careful stewardship. When two or three bad seasons stack up, the farm itself is on the auction block, often purchased by operations large enough to weather the volatility. That consolidation is not a natural outcome. It is a policy failure.
The Squeeze Isn't Only From the Sky
Climate volatility is only half the story. Fertilizer, seed, fuel, and equipment costs have surged, while the prices farmers receive for their goods have not kept pace. Meanwhile, corporate consolidation in meatpacking, grain processing, and grocery retail has narrowed farmers' choices to a handful of buyers who set terms with little negotiation.
The result is a quiet exodus from the land — one that hollows out rural main streets, school enrollment, and county tax bases across eastern and central North Carolina. Every farm lost is a community diminished.
Kelly's Plan: Keep Farmers Farming
Kelly's agenda for North Carolina agriculture rests on three commitments.
1. Reform crop insurance so it works for small farms. Today's insurance programs too often favor large, commodity-heavy operations while offering thin or complicated coverage for diversified and beginning farmers. Kelly will push for premium structures, simplified enrollment, and whole-farm coverage options designed for the mid-sized and diversified operations that define so much of North Carolina agriculture.
2. Streamline disaster relief for the farms that need it most. After every hurricane, small farmers navigate a maze of applications, documentation, and delays while larger operations deploy teams of specialists. Kelly will fight to create a single, fast-track disaster program for small farms in North Carolina — with direct technical assistance, advance payments for urgent needs, and clear timelines so families are not left waiting months for help they needed yesterday.
3. Invest in local and regional food systems. The strongest hedge against a volatile global market is a strong local one. Kelly will champion expanded investment in farmers markets, food hubs, farm-to-school programs in our public schools, and cold-storage and processing infrastructure so North Carolina growers can sell more of what they raise to North Carolina eaters. Keeping food dollars circulating in our own communities is economic development, public health policy, and farm preservation all at once.
A Partnership, Not a Handout
Farmers in this state are not asking for rescue. They are asking for a level field — insurance that actually insures, disaster aid that actually arrives, and markets that are not rigged against them. Kelly's approach treats family farmers as the essential economic partners they are, and it rejects the idea that rural North Carolina should simply absorb loss after loss while profits flow elsewhere.
The Stakes for Every North Carolinian
Agriculture is our state's leading industry, but its importance runs deeper than dollars. It is the farmland that protects our watersheds, the open space that defines our landscapes, the heritage that connects generations from the mountains to the coast. If we lose our family farms, we do not get them back.
Kelly is running to make sure we never have to find out what North Carolina looks like without them. That means standing up for crop insurance reform, cutting red tape out of disaster relief, and building a food economy where our farmers thrive. Our agricultural heartland has carried this state for centuries. It is time for this state to carry our farmers.
