Consumers today have a growing appetite for information about how their food is grown and raised, yet this presents new challenges for farmers trying to meet consumers’ ever-changing demands, said food and ag economist Jayson Lusk.

“People in production agriculture have, in some ways, been a victim of their own success,” said Lusk, a professor and chair of the Oklahoma State University’s Department of Agriculture Econ­omics, before speaking at the Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Conference Jan. 30-31 in Des Moines.

“Food has never been less expensive. We consumers take so much for granted that often we don’t understand where things come from. And because we can now afford to look for alternatives, that puts pressure on farmers that they’ve never...