The Key Struggles Facing Modern Farming Businesses

Credit - Yuriy Bogdanov, @profepix

Many decades ago, if you owned a patch of land, you had a business opportunity at your disposal. While farming companies are still successful today, modern challenges are placing some serious roadblocks to the industry. This makes it harder than ever for a lot of small family farms to make ends meet.

With that in mind, what are the key struggles facing modern farming businesses - and are there ways to combat them?

Climate change

Climate change and the farming world have an inseparable relationship, for example Meat production is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions every year. This is forcing many producers to look for sustainable agriculture and practices to clamp down on carbon emissions. It is important to note that much of the pressure is aimed at mass farming producers and less on organic and free-range farmers.

On the other hand, farmers are directly impacted by climate change. Changes to global temperatures have made it harder for some farmers to grow and cultivate crops. A lack of rainfall dries up the land, while some farmers face frequent floods in other parts of the world. Farming businesses are constantly fighting an uphill battle to stay profitable.

Reliance on machinery & technology

The key to successful farms has always been a focus on efficiency. The difference is that the nature of efficiency has changed over the past 2 decades. Traditionally farmers viewed efficiency as all the activities in seasonal periods, so activities such as ploughing fields needed to take as little time as possible to start seeding. As a result, modern technology and equipment found a strong market with farmers across the entire value chain, even basic equipment such as tractors have become more efficient and more environmentally friendly (although still not carbon neutral).

The downside to this is that there’s an overreliance on technology without manual measures of operating when complex technology fails. Trusted brands like New Holland have designed their sales and service processes to ensure fail-safe methods are in place. Even New Holland repair manuals are easily sourced and help farmers prevent and deal with repairs as swiftly as possible.

Food waste

Farms lose a lot of food for numerous reasons. There are a myraid of reasons why crops don’t grow as well or as healthy as predicted, meaning that a large percentage is thrown away. Other reasons include strict standards from governing insitutions which result in perfectly edible food being thrown away because they aren’t accepted, and then too costly to process. Regardless of the reasoning, food waste is a significant struggle for modern farming businesses as it directly affects their bottom line. 

As such, there needs to be a multisector collaboration from consumers, to governments, food processors and retailers working to develop ways to reduce food waste on farms. This means farmers can sell more of their crops, making more money and avoiding big financial losses. 

COVID-19

Farms faced major issues during the ongoing pandemic as a lot of processing plants closed down. In other cases border controls in place stopped farmers from distributing goods around the world, leading to severe cashflow problems. 

Thankfully, as COVID-19 becomes easier for governments and communitites to deal with, farms have been able to access distribution networks once more.

Lack of Labour

Farmers around the world are beginning to face labour shortages as young and able workers choose suburban and city lifestyles over physically intensive farming work. Some innovations in smart farming such as the use of digital automation and drones have been effective but not at a mass scale.


In conclusion, modern agricultural businesses face a range of struggles that never existed a few decades ago. Farmers need to invest in new technologies to stay active whilst balancing serious tradeoffs. As a global community, we should consider how we scrutinize farmers for faster change due to the difficulties facing the industry and the individuals who work hard to put food on our plates.