[WAPO] "Chicken noodle soup?" she wondered as she sat at her kitchen table with a pen and notepad. "No, I’ll make chicken and biscuits. That’s more filling."These days, Anne has only about $175 each month to spend on food, beyond the eggs, milk and meat that her family’s dairy operation supplies. So this has become her monthly ritual, going through several drafts to create an affordable meal plan that keeps her husband and five kids from going hungry.
"I wish I could make lasagna, but it’s expensive," she said. So are fresh vegetables, except for cheap bags of onions and potatoes. Even "Fruit?" had a question mark next to it.
When Anne and her husband, Andy, took over his parents’ 305-acre dairy farm in 2013, they made a good living. But years of falling milk prices, complicated by President Trump’s trade wars, have left the couple nearly $200,000 in debt.
Farmers around the country are struggling to pay for basics like groceries and electricity as farm bankruptcies rise and farm debt hits a historic high. Calls from farmers in financial crisis to state mediators have soared by 57 percent since 2015.
"We’re supposed to be feeding the world, and we can’t even put food on our own table," Anne said.