Food is, without a doubt, an essential cornerstone of the Minnesota economy that sustains lives both here and around the world. Many of the companies Minnesotan natives grew up with in their backyards - Cargill, General Mills, CHS, Post Consumer Brands - play a key role in providing the essential pieces of our global agricultural and food ecosystem. What is more, the thousands of farmers - both here, across the midwest, and around the world - are sustaining our increasingly stressed food supply chain from which these companies bring our most loved items to shelves, cabinets, and refrigerators around the world.

There is certainly a lot to consider when we think about the scale, time, resource, and fragileness of our food, how it is harvested, and how it eventually feeds billions of people around the world. Often times it is easy to overlook the intricacy of our food, the food supply chain, and the changing impacts our economies, our populations, and our climate have on its production. So, how is the world of agriculture evolving to meet the current needs of our populations while simultaneously taking into account the realities of topographical changes, weather pattern changes, and other realities that climate and evolution of our land are showing? But even before the seemingly existential question I just asked, there are more important ones to ask that many of us may fail to think about. Just how difficult is it to farm in the 21st century, and how has its significance changed for those who are doing it, and those that are close to it? What types of challenges, situations, and variables are most important for those that work in agriculture need to consider when they are doing their work?

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