Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Community Science
A new study by Hopkins et al. [2025], which was recently published in Community Science’s special collection on “Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Sustainable Agriculture,” looks at how small- and mid-scale farmers and ranchers see the future of agriculture. It also examines how uncertainty about that future affects their mental health, decision-making, and ability to keep their farms running.
The authors interviewed 31 farmers in Georgia, asking about the challenges they face. These included money problems, a shrinking farm workforce, more complex regulations, and difficulties in passing farms on to the next generation. Many of these personal concerns were tied to bigger worries about agriculture overall, such as the growing gap between farmers and non-farmers, the rise of corporate-owned farms, changing weather patterns, and possible risks to the country’s food supply. These challenges often left farmers feeling alone, undervalued, and discouraged.
The study gives a rare long-term view of how farming communities can remain sustainable and resilient. It calls for strategies and policies that truly reflect farmers’ experiences and concerns—both for today’s problems and for future challenges—and that address not just immediate issues but also the deeper, systemic causes of stress in agriculture.
Citation: Hopkins, N., Weatherly, C., Reece, C., & Proctor, C. (2025). “At some point, you just run out of road”: Farmers’ concerns about the future of agriculture. Community Science, 4, e2025CSJ000140. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CSJ000140
—Claire Beveridge, Editor, Community Science
Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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