One of the many things I enjoy about living in Wrangell is the fact that my sinuses and allergies aren’t under constant assault from local crops and different farming practices.

It is a welcome relief that I can’t even begin to fully articulate.

But, growing up in a rural area where farming is so prevalent, you learn different things. For instance, I learned how the agricultural market is a good indicator for other economic markets. I also learned that when the cost of food goes up, so do the costs for most other things.

Agriculture is the first domino. A farmer doesn’t just grow corn or lettuce; a farmer buys diesel, borrows money, fixes equipment, pays for freight and negotiates with processors who have their own energy bills and labor shortages. Plant a crop and you plant the whole economy with it — fuel, finance, fertilizer and the fork at the end of the line.

When that domino wobbles, you feel it in your grocery bill, your light bill, even in the price of a washing machine that arrived on a ship delayed by somebody else’s “policy win.”

We like to imagine trade is a clean lever: pull here, help there. Agriculture shows it’s more like irrigation. Block one channel and somewhere else dries up. Put a tariff on steel, and a combine gets pricier. A pricier combine makes the harvest cost more. That cost gets baked into a carrot. Then the country you taxed slaps duties on your wheat or soybeans, and a buyer you courted for decades finds a new supplier. Money, like water, finds a path.

Feed costs rise and meat follows. Packaging ticks up and your cereal does, too. Diesel spikes and your lettuce costs more because it rode a thousand miles by truck. Interest rates climb and the farmer’s operating loan, the warehouse expansion and the grocery’s inventory all get more expensive. Low water in the Mississippi or the Panama Canal isn’t a footnote — it’s a surcharge at checkout.

This is why trade wars make good speeches and bad receipts. They tax us invisibly, a nickel at a time, across bread, milk, electricity and freight. You don’t notice the tariff; you notice the total.

Yes, things should be fair. But use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. Target cheaters precisely. Invest at home where it matters: ports, rail, energy; research that cuts input costs; farm labor pathways so crops don’t rot; crop insurance so a bad year isn’t a spiral. Above all, keep rules predictable so a farmer can plan a season and a shipper can plan a route. Boredom in policy is prosperity at the register.

When I make coffee, I’m mindful of invisible parts: rain in Brazil, a fertilizer plant in Louisiana, a container schedule in Singapore, a labor visa in California, a hometown bank’s credit line. Nudge any one of those and the price moves. Nudge a few at once — with loud, blunt policy — and everyone pays, even those of us whose sinuses finally get a break.

Why should a town like ours care? Because our grocery aisle does. Our freight schedule does. Our electric bill does. The global market isn’t “out there.” It’s dinner. If we want fewer economic sneezes, we should stop spraying irritants into the system. Keep the dominoes standing so the rest of us can eat in peace.