Farmers growing increasingly desperate amid rising energy and fertilizer prices

Farmers across the Midwest are entering planting season under mounting financial pressure, as the Iran conflict drives up diesel and fertilizer prices — deepening an agricultural downturn that some say is the worst since the crisis of the 1980s. Why it matters: Rising fuel and fertilizer costs threaten to push more family farms out of business, drive up food prices and further strain rural economies already battered by trade disruptions, inflation and extreme weather. The big picture: Mark Muel

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