Marlene "Harv" Harvester is not a real person, though the dilemma she represents is very real for agricultural equipment dealers across the Midwest. This interview is a composite based on reporting about climate impacts on farming communities and the businesses that depend on them.
We meet at Harvester Equipment Feed on a Tuesday afternoon in October 2025, in a town of 4,200 people in central Iowa that I've agreed not to name. The showroom floor holds six massive combines in various states of obsolescence, price tags still attached. A John Deere calendar on the wall is stuck on March. Harv, 47, wearing Carhartt overalls and a Pioneer Seeds cap, makes coffee in a corner office that overlooks empty display racks where seed varieties used to be organized by planting date.
Her father sold her this business in 2005, when corn was king and climate change was something that happened to polar bears. Twenty years later, she's trying to decide whether to close it down entirely.
So your actual legal name is Harvester?
Harv: Yeah, I know. My dad thought it was hilarious when I took over the business. "Harv Harvester selling to harvesters." He'd do this whole routine at the feed store. Now it just feels like God has a really dark sense of humor. Cosmically dark. I've got business cards that say "Harvester Equipment" and my name underneath, and every time I hand one to a farmer who's telling me he's getting out, I think: well, this is awkward.
When did you start noticing your customers were struggling?
Harv: Farming's always been boom and bust, right? That's the business. But this is different. Used to be a bad year, then a good year, then a bad year. Cycle. You could plan around it. Around 2019, 2020, the bad years started clustering. Guys would come in and instead of "what's the new seed variety," it was "what can I do with less water" or "what grows in heat like this."
Then the questions changed again. Last two years it's been "how much can I get for this combine if I sell it" and "you know anyone hiring in Des Moines?" That's when I knew we weren't in a cycle anymore. We were in a trajectory.
The research shows farmers are adapting, switching varieties, changing planting dates. You must be selling them different products?
Harv: Oh sure, I'm selling different stuff. Drought-resistant seed varieties that cost 40% more and yield 20% less. Soil moisture sensors that tell you exactly how screwed you are. I've got a whole corner of the warehouse now devoted to what I call the "desperation aisle." Expensive tech that might help you lose less money.
But here's the thing nobody talks about.
[Long pause. Drinks coffee.]
The adaptation only works to a point. I read that Nature study, the one that came out in June saying even with adaptation, we're looking at yield losses that just keep coming.1 My customers read it too. And when you're a farmer staring at projections that say your land will produce 41% less by the time your kids would take over, you start asking yourself why you're investing in a $400,000 combine for a future that might not exist.
I had a guy in here last month, fourth-generation farmer, crying in my office. Not because he was broke. He wasn't. Because he realized he was advising his son to go to college for engineering instead of coming back to the farm. He said, "Harv, I'm the last one. I'm the end of the line." Then he asked if I was hiring, which [laughs bitterly] no, I'm not hiring.
What's your customer base look like now compared to five years ago?
Harv: Down 35%, maybe 40%. Some of that's consolidation, smaller farms getting absorbed by bigger operations. But a lot is just exits. Guys selling to developers, or just walking away. The ones who stay are buying less, maintaining equipment longer, making do. My parts business is up because people are nursing 20-year-old combines instead of buying new ones. That's not a good sign. That's a dying industry keeping itself on life support.
It's not just the farmers either. I've got three employees now instead of seven. The seed company rep who used to visit every month hasn't been here since spring. The financing guys are getting twitchy. They know the collateral is depreciating faster than the loan terms account for.
So what's your decision point? What are you actually weighing?
Harv: [Stares out window at the combines.]
Okay, so. Option one: I close now, sell the inventory at a loss, try to get out before things get worse. Take whatever equity I can salvage and move to Omaha, get a job at a dealership that sells construction equipment or something. Cut my losses.
Option two: I pivot. Try to become a different kind of business. Maybe focus on the bigger operations that are consolidating, become a regional supplier instead of local. Or get into the precision ag tech side, sensors and data analytics. Except that requires capital I don't have, and I'd be competing with companies that have actual tech expertise, which I don't.
Option three: I stay and just bleed out slowly. Keep the doors open for the customers who are left, accept that I'm running a hospice for a dying industry, hope I can make it to retirement age before the money runs out entirely.
None of these are good options. That's what keeps me up at night. I'm trying to decide between bad, worse, and worst.
What does your dad say?
Harv: [Laughs.] Oh, he's furious. Not at me. At the situation. He keeps saying "this isn't how it's supposed to work." He sold me this business as a legacy, you know? Something to pass down. Now it's an anchor. He feels guilty, which is insane because it's not his fault the planet is cooking. But he sees what's happening and he knows he sold me into a trap.
Last month he offered to help me close down. Said he'd chip in to cover some of the losses so I could get out cleaner. That's when I knew he'd accepted it's over. My dad offering to help me kill his life's work.
Have you talked to other dealers about what they're doing?
Harv: Oh yeah, we all talk. There's a dark humor to it. We've got a group text that's basically a support group for people watching their businesses die in slow motion. Somebody'll send a photo of an empty showroom with the caption "quiet Tuesday." Somebody else will share an article about crop yield projections with just a skull emoji.
Some guys are getting out. One dealer I know in Kansas closed last year, moved to Colorado, started selling solar equipment. Says he's doing fine but he's also 32 and has no kids and could afford to start over. I'm 47 with a mortgage and a daughter in college. Starting over isn't the same equation.
Others are trying to diversify. Adding lawn care equipment, small engine repair, whatever. Basically admitting they're not an ag dealer anymore, they're a general rural supply store that happens to have some farming stuff. That might work in some places. Here? I don't know. The town's shrinking too. When the farms go, everything else follows.
What would make you decide to stay versus leave?
Harv: [Long silence.]
I think if I saw evidence that the adaptation was actually working. Not just "farmers are trying new things" but actual data showing that the adjustments are enough. But that Nature study says adaptation only offsets about a third of the losses.1 A third. That means two-thirds of the damage just happens anyway.
Or if I saw farmers younger than 50 buying new equipment. Planning for a future. Right now my youngest regular customer is 48. That tells you everything.
The thing is, I'm not just making a business decision. I'm making a decision about whether I believe in a future for this place. If I close, I'm saying "this is over." If I stay, I'm saying "there's still something here worth fighting for." And I genuinely don't know which one is true.
What does your daughter think?
Harv: She's studying environmental science at Iowa State, which is its own kind of cosmic joke. She's learning about climate impacts on agriculture while I'm living them. She tells me I should close. Says the writing's on the wall and I'm being stubborn. She's probably right.
But she also grew up in this building. Used to do homework in that office, help me stock shelves in the summer. This place is as much her inheritance as it was mine. Except instead of inheriting a business, she's inheriting the decision to kill it.
She said something last month that really stuck with me. She said, "Mom, you're not giving up on farming. Farming is giving up on you." And I thought, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what this feels like.
So where are you leaning?
Harv: [Drinks more coffee, which is clearly cold by now.]
I think I'm going to give it until spring. See what planting season looks like. If the guys who are left are still investing, still planning, maybe there's something. If it's more of the same—more exits, more desperation purchases, more "I'm just trying to get through one more year"—then I'll probably close.
Part of me wants someone to just tell me what to do. Like, if there was a definitive answer, "close now" or "stay and fight," it would be easier. But there isn't. It's all just probabilities and projections and guesses about a future nobody's ever seen before.
I keep thinking about that farmer who cried in my office. The end of the line. That's what this feels like. Not just for him, not just for me, but for this whole way of life. And I'm trying to decide if I want to be here to turn out the lights, or if I should leave before it gets that dark.
[She looks at the combines on the showroom floor, dusty and unsold.]
The really fucked up part? Those machines are beautiful. Incredible pieces of engineering. They could harvest for another 20 years easy. But they're going to sit there and depreciate because there's nobody left to buy them. That's what kills me. It's not that the equipment failed. It's not that the farmers failed. It's that the whole system we built this on—stable weather, predictable seasons, land that produces like it always has—that system is failing. And no amount of adaptation or innovation or hoping real hard is going to fix it.
So yeah. Spring. I'll decide in spring. Ask me then if I'm still here.