If you are a small farmer, you are very susceptible to the impacts of extreme weather events like droughts, floods, heat waves, and freezes. Small farmers often have fewer resources and savings to carry them over a bad year than a larger farm operation, so without government and private loans many would have to stop farming when a bad year wiped out their crop. Time magazine posted a story recently describing some of the hardships small farmers are seeing due to the extreme weather that has recent affected parts of the United States.
