AMNA NAWAZ: For generations, the family farm has been central to the American story.

But, these days, farmers are struggling with sharply higher costs and crushing debt, on top of the same economic pressures the rest of the country feels.

Judy Woodruff reports from Western Kansas on what it takes to keep a farm going and who will carry on the tradition.

It's part of her series Crossroads: America at 250.

COLE CARPENTER, Triple C Farms: This corn should be six feet tall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There's no corn harvest for Cole Carpenter this fall after a severe drought this summer stunted its growth.

COLE CARPENTER: It's tough, no matter which way you look at it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For generations of Americans, farming was a way of life, work the land, make a living, and pass it on.

At the nation's founding, nine in 10 Americans were farmers.

Today, fewer than 2 percent are.

SARAH MOCK, Author, "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm": To Thomas Jefferson, America was always an agricultural experiment.

We were always going to be the agricultural powerhouse of the world, and that was going to be the bedrock of our nation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We met agricultural journalist Sarah Mock at Old Town Farm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a former horse farm turned into a cafe and event space.

SARAH MOCK: Jefferson crafted this, like, yeoman idea of people who are close to the land and therefore have this, like, sense of community and loyalty and patriotism that had really not been seen by Europeans in like hundreds of years.

COLE CARPENTER: Yes, farming is a gamble.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I first met Cole Carpenter at his farm near Leoti, Kansas, 20 years ago, when I was reporting for a documentary about millennials.

Cole's grandfather, Dale Appl, had been farming for decades.

The land had been in his family since the late 1800s.

But even in 2006, there were doubts about whether farming could support the next generation.

DALE APPL, Farmer: And I told him he ought to have another profession.

He could still farm on the side.

And he might have to yet.

I don't know.

It's pretty tough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Twenty years later, the Carpenters are still farming.

They have expanded it 10,000 acres, added cattle, and a crop spraying business.

But margins are slim.

Two years ago, Cole and his wife, Bridget (ph), sold 800 acres to put capital back into the operation.

Was that a tough decision?

COLE CARPENTER: Oh, yes, 100 percent, yes, yes.

I mean, that -- it doesn't go easily.

But at the same time, the less debt, the less stress was an easier decision there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Around them, larger operations bought up smaller farms, mirroring a national trend.

The number of farms in the U.S.

declined 10 percent between 2012 and 2022 to about 1.9 million.

At the same time, the average size grew by 5 percent.

COLE CARPENTER: And it felt like we were on an island.

Like, land is being gobbled.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All around you.

COLE CARPENTER: Around you.

One of my grandpa's biggest thing was, he always said, don't worry about what the neighbors are doing or what's going on around you.

Take care of what you have, keep working, and you will be fine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now just 4 percent of farms, the largest family operations, account for more than half of all agricultural sales.

And Carpenter says the challenge isn't just producing more.

It's paying for everything it takes to do it.

COLE CARPENTER: All the technology, all the seed we have, we're able to grow more, but it also comes with a cost.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But even with all the latest technology, those who work the land still face risks they can't control.

COLE CARPENTER: You can stick your hand in.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Weather, commodity prices, land costs, politics, and tariffs.

COLE CARPENTER: At the end of the day, we don't really have any control over what the price of wheat is today or the price of corn is.

I think the American farmer and rancher is kind of caught in a wicked loophole.

You know what I mean?

We're just trying to survive.

SARAH MOCK: Jefferson's idea of how farms were going to work lasted well into the late 1800s.

We really thought it's going to be fine, there's always going to be land, anyone who wants it and who has the right effort and the grit is going to have their chance.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That idea at our founding depended on one thing: There was always more land to take.

But by the late 1800s, that was changing.

Still, that classic image of the farmer has endured, independent, self-sufficient, and deeply rooted to the land, as seen in Grant Wood's iconic American Gothic, a painting of a stoic farmer and his daughter in 1930.

NARRATOR: In the Wheat Belt, farmers face ruin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the reality has always been more complicated.

The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression devastated farming, forcing many farmers off their land.

The federal government stepped in and fundamentally reshaped farming into a larger, more mechanized industry.

SARAH MOCK: And that is basically the road we have been on since then.

Farms have continued to get bigger.

We have seen a huge drop-off in the total number of farmers.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And if you don't inherit land, Mock says, it is nearly impossible to make it.

It's a story she explores in her book "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm."

SARAH MOCK: So I started out doing research for this book thinking, what can I learn about conventional agriculture and teach to first-generation farmers?

What's the secret sauce?

How do you make a farm last?

And not spoil it, but it's money.

TIM PETERSON, Cedar Crest Farms: This is a used one.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It's a reality 71-year-old farmer Tim Peterson of monument, Kansas, knows all too well.

TIM PETERSON: We have this mythical sense of what farmers are and what they do, and I think there's just -- people don't quite understand how financially and business-orientated it is nowadays.

It's -- I don't know if you need quite an MBA to run a farm, but it's getting close.

(LAUGHTER) JUDY WOODRUFF: He and his wife, Rebecca (ph), are facing the once unthinkable, the possibility of selling family land to pay down about $800,000 of debt.

TIM PETERSON: It's really hard, actually, because you give up opportunities.

You give up an opportunity into the future.

You will not be able to ever buy that land back.

Some of the land we would sell, oh, my, well, it's been in the family certainly since the 1920s, so over 100 years, easy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For his daughter Lydia, who works in Topeka, this land is part of her family's legacy.

LYDIA PETERSON, Daughter of Tim Peterson: I think it's inspiring to think about all of the blood, sweat and tears my great grandparents have put into the land, and then my grandparents, several generations of hard work that the land represents.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Last fall, Lydia tried to buy back a piece of family land at an auction, but instead of the expected $350,000 price tag, it sold for $540,000.

Tim says the economics of farming have become increasingly unpredictable.

TIM PETERSON: We will be up maybe $130,000 and then we're down $60,000 the next.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It's that volatile?

TIM PETERSON: Yes, it's quite volatile, and because of the crop prices and the yield.

We're all -- we're really dependent on yields.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The costs of staying in business can be enormous.

Nationwide, farm debt has risen sharply, up an estimated 70 percent from 10 years ago.

TIM PETERSON: What really kind of scares me in terms of American farming is the fact that -- the consolidation of the industry.

That troubles me a lot.

If you have got a farm that has 120,000 acres versus a farm that has 1,800 acres, all of a sudden you lose that diversity and the decision-making.

COLE CARPENTER: I mean, this obviously has withstood.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet the next generation hasn't given up.

Cole Carpenter's sons, Huck, age 15 and Chase, 18, are still in high school, but say they want a farm.

They would be the sixth generation to work on this land.

HUCK CARPENTER, Son of Cole Carpenter: The big corporations around us are always trying to expand and take over more territory.

So keeping our ground and being financially stable, it's going to be difficult.

CHASE CARPENTER, Son of Cole Carpenter: From my grandpa to my great-grandpa, it's always been how proud this family farm was, and how we have always rolled through punches and just always came out on the end.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But their dad, just like his grandpa 20 years ago, wants them to have a choice.

COLE CARPENTER: I want them to be happy in whatever they do, whatever way they want to go.

I hope it's coming back here.

But at the same time, if it's not, that's fine, because I think life's too short to be trying to do something that you don't want to do to make somebody else happy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And for Sarah Mock, there's something even deeper at stake, the connection that comes from knowing a particular piece of land.

SARAH MOCK: Being close to land and not just owning it by having the deed, but owning a place by knowing it, by being able to say, like, oh, I know where that turn in the river is.

Nothing makes you more patriotic than knowing the land.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Leoti, Kansas.