What I Saw in America’s Heartland

That gives the reel a much stronger ending because it connects what you saw out West to what you personally saw after Helene: communities cannot sit around waiting for someone else to save them. I’d work it in like this:

I just got home from a trip through Nebraska and South Dakota, where I had the opportunity to visit a few farms and ranches. I saw firsthand what some American farmers are facing right now. Fields that should have been filled with tall wheat ready for harvest were dry and short. Corn that should have been towering over me was burned up and barely knee-high, and hay fields that should have been producing winter feed were almost nonexistent.

I saw cattle being fed hay in the middle of summer when they should have been standing in tall, lush grass. In Nebraska alone, nearly one million acres of grazing land burned this spring. Add drought, wildfires, extreme heat and rising production costs, and these are the same people we depend on to keep producing our food.

Politicians don’t care about us the way we care about each other, and this isn’t left versus right. I saw that firsthand after Helene. When everything fell apart, it was neighbors helping neighbors, strangers showing up for strangers and ordinary people coming together to make a difference. Our government failed us, but individuals rallied together and changed lives.

American farmers and ranchers need that same support right now. Buy from them whenever you can. Pay attention to where your food comes from. Shop locally and put money back into your own community. Support small businesses and communities built around agriculture. We may not be able to make it rain or stop the next wildfire, but we can make sure the people enduring all of it know that keeping them farming matters to the rest of us.