September 24, 2025 • 18 mins
Host and American Family Farmer, Doug Stephan www.eastleighfarm.com shares why he created the American Family Farmer program before jumping into the news affecting family farmers, beginning with the news of prices for dairy going down, while production has surged, and cheese exports are on the rise.
Then, Doug goes over the numbers of who owns what farms — family farms comprise 95% of all U.S. farms.
Shifting focus, Doug opines on people who grew up on the farm, but moved away, and wish they could go back to being on the farm. This also points at how many family farmers have secondary jobs to help keep things afloat, and the disgusting reality that a majority of people, especially of new farmers, can’t make a living solely working on and running their farm. This brings back a common question, “Is farming really worth it?” Doug references his conversation with David Buck of Guardians Dairy, an insightful conversation which you can hear HERE.
Website: AmericanFamilyFarmerShow.com
Social Media: @GoodDayNetworks
Then, Doug goes over the numbers of who owns what farms — family farms comprise 95% of all U.S. farms.
Shifting focus, Doug opines on people who grew up on the farm, but moved away, and wish they could go back to being on the farm. This also points at how many family farmers have secondary jobs to help keep things afloat, and the disgusting reality that a majority of people, especially of new farmers, can’t make a living solely working on and running their farm. This brings back a common question, “Is farming really worth it?” Doug references his conversation with David Buck of Guardians Dairy, an insightful conversation which you can hear HERE.
Website: AmericanFamilyFarmerShow.com
Social Media: @GoodDayNetworks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The American Family Farmer podcast sponsored in part by Caldron,
The Safe proven Way to Lose weight. Check it all
out at toploss dot com. I'm Doug Stephan. This is
the American Family Farmer. I think I'm gonna preface. I
was going to say this has been but I think
this has been a pretty good summer for most people
except for dairy. The prices for milk at the pool
(00:24):
have gone down, down, down, because when the price of
milk goes up, everybody buys more. Cows produces too much milk.
So let's visit dairy as we go into the farm news.
I guess if you are a student of all of this,
and I am, even though I'm not milking cows at
the moment. I raised jersey replacement heifers, and I have
(00:44):
a bow Bai sanctuary on my farm, which is Eastley
Ea S T L E I G. H. Easlely Farm.
You can find Eastlelyfarm dot com and find it on
Facebook Instagram, as some of you have done. I think
last week I made mention of a fellow who sent
me a pretty name note. He found me through going
to Eastlee Farm, which is fine. So anyway, milk futures
(01:07):
have dropped. A lot of seventeen bucks production have served
all over the country. There are more cows, producing more
milk per animal, and there has been some price support
from the strong cheese and butter export business. But look
at the numbers. I'm looking at a graph now. Cheese
(01:28):
exports are up twenty nine percent from last year, but
Class three milk futures are just below seventeen dollars. We've
got a lot of supply. The growing trend of increased
milk production started early this year. But as I said,
this has been something I remember this all every time
(01:51):
this happens in my life, I've seen the same thing
happened and this is no exception. The most recent milk
production report at the production total nineteen zero point five
to seven billion pounds. That's up three point four percent
from the same time last year. More cows producing more milk.
(02:16):
It is pretty interesting from a marketing perspective because production
is so huge, but we have more and more farmers
with more and more. Is one guy milking ten thousand
cows in one area I saw, there's still a twenty
twenty thousand head at a farm in Indiana. The average
(02:37):
is thirty four pounds per cow, which is up somewhat.
I'm talking about nationally. That doesn't seem like a lot actually,
but when you take into account cows at various stages
of their lactation, demand has stayed firm. The most recent
US dairy export reports show the total of dairy exports
(03:01):
at two hundred and forty eight six hundred metric tons
last month. That's up ten percent from the same month
last year. I guess this is going to reflect on
the number of dairy cattle. Heffer inventories are not rebounding,
and they may not now for a couple of years,
(03:22):
so it's hard to forecast live births and full grown
dairy replacements that will be entering into milking herds. The
dairy industry. Let's see here. I guess I would use
the word unique at this point. The limits or the
heights the numbers are unseen before beef sales, contributing a
(03:50):
larger portion to dairy farm profitability because of the numbers.
And this is what's been happening. Cows have been bred
into a beef or you know Normandy's big cows that
when they finished their lactation have a lot of beef.
Dairy farmers are looking to maintain or grow they're herd
because of the prices for cows. I'm just looking at
(04:14):
the price of semen here us dairy farmers made significant
changes in semen purchases. In the last year. Gender sorted
seamen sales grew by one point five million units, represented
an incredible seventeen percent growth rate in one year. Wow,
(04:35):
eas aly, and there's not I sort of went into
when I was still using AI, I use just a
bull put in. This is the old fashioned way, but
I like it because I'm only going to do thirty
or forty cows a year, and the bull's fine. I'm
talking about breeding. Well, you have a fifty to fifty
(04:57):
chance of a half our bull. Then there's this the
sordid seamen, the sext semen, and they say that the
number of units was up. There dairy farmers keeping an
eye on the beef market. However, though, and it doesn't
make any difference in that circumstance, the sex semen business
(05:18):
was down because the value of what comes out is
the same, whether to have her or bull. And so again,
as I said, looking at the future of dairy heifer's
two d and twenty one thousand more beef on dairy
calves born this year, one hundred and ninety two thousand
(05:40):
fewer dairy calves reaching the completion rate. And so I
have because I'm in the dairy replacement business. I look
at those numbers, fifty six and twenty seven more dairy
replacements this year than last year. Okay, so I can
go through these numbers. I think it's trends that are
(06:01):
more interesting. People find numbers to be boring. So there
it is. That's my update on the dairy business and
where we all are, according to facts and figures from
various sources, including the banks, including the USDA, etc. Etc. Okay,
let's talk about something else that's important in terms of numbers.
(06:22):
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have
had success. They have had powerful success using calitrin to
lose weight and keep it off. Go to toploss dot com,
which is the website for a Caldron and find a
very strong resource there that will help you with your
(06:43):
weight loss program, your ideas. Get support from a counselor
because they have them available for you. All you going
to do is ask and you can talk to somebody
on the phone every week often as you want to
just to get the information. You can easily find out
what the formula is by going online to top looss
dot com, or when you buy the product, you look
(07:05):
at it and say, wow, look at this. So if
you're not feeling like you, if you're upset because you
haven't felt good for a while, you're aging. Of course,
and maybe depending on your lifestyle, your diet, your bodies
are producing less collagen protein. That's the main ingredient, main
ingredient in Caldron, also all kinds of other things that
(07:28):
help you lose weight, the non toxicoid. Please go to
a top loss dot com and check out what's there.
Use the DOUG code on all your orders over fifty
dollars and you get the best deal of the day,
the best deal of the day customers tell the story
by the way at top loss dot com. But you
can shop their sales every weekend use the DOUG code
(07:49):
and you won't have to pay for shipping either. It's
a great product with great results, and you want that
number one choice for natural weight loss and wellness Caldron
at top looss dot com. Okay, let's talk about the numbers.
I guess. I said, I didn't want to become a statistician,
but I was looking at some numbers of who owns
what farm. This is an update, I guess on the
(08:12):
real numbers. Family farms comprise ninety five percent of all
US farms according to the egg Census from the USDA.
The Farm Typology Report, which I find interesting, focuses on
the family farm defined as any farm where the majority
of the business is owned by the producer and individuals
(08:33):
related to the producer. So the classification here of all
farms the various unique categories. There are two criteria for
that who owns the operation and the gross cache farm income,
and that includes a producers sale of crops and livestock,
fees for delivering commodities under prorection contracts, that sort of thing.
(08:56):
One point nine million farms in America. One point point
nine million farms. The data show that small family farms,
let's see, with the less income than three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year, account for eighty five percent
of all the farms, thirty nine percent of total land
in farms, and fourteen percent of the value of all
(09:16):
agricultural products. So you can see where the large scale
family farms are headed, that is, the farms that make
a million bucks or more a year. They are only
four percent though, of all the US farms. Let's see
what else in this informative piece. The number of family
farms decreased by eight percent in the last ten years,
(09:38):
so that means we've lost one hundred and sixty thousand
farms in America. This is very dangerous, very very dangerous.
The number of small family farms fell ten percent. Let's
see the numbers going back to the hundred and fifty
thousand a year or a million a year. The million
a year of farms down seven percent, so the bigger
(10:01):
farms are down less than the smaller farms. Let's see
what other key findings are here that I can report
on farm specialization varied between the farm size fifty six
percent of small farms specialized in cattle, thirty one percent
we're doing hay and forage production, sixty thousand farms. Mid
(10:26):
sized farms specialized in grains and seeds. Large scale farms
were more varied. So the seed thing, that's a really
interestingly report on seed size and how many. This is
controversy because there's this whole business about saving seeds and
(10:47):
how you can you know, use your own this. It
depends on where you buy the seeds. It's that simple.
I have long since been someone who when talking about
the what you do with your seeds if you buy
them from Monsanto or Bayer, and I guess there's some
others who are doing mostly Monsanta, le'll suya. If you
try to use the seeds over again, many of them
(11:08):
are now engineered so that you can't use them over again.
Soybean oil and oil seeds, I thought this is interesting,
make up sixty percent of the market share for food oils,
row crop commodities, soybeans and things like that. When crushed,
soybean oil is used for food or biofuel production, and
(11:32):
then the rest of it is consumed as animal feed.
So the question on some of these people's minds as
I've gone through all these numbers here, and I think
I asked this question a few weeks ago, or maybe
a month ago, is farming really worth it? I'm Doug Stefan,
and she's not. She could be Elizabeth Miller. However, as
a matter of fact, she is. Elizabeth Miller is one
(11:55):
of the great reasons for going to toploss dot Com
and engage in the work of Caltron getting that weight
off the natural way.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Caldron is different than everything else up there because it's
really good for you. It's actually drug free, stimulant free,
so it's good for you. We've been helping customers since
nineteen ninety seven. It's that's over two hundred thousand happy customers,
so I know that we just helped people all over
the United States lose weight. So if you go to
toploss dot com, you'll see the calendri and sell right there.
(12:24):
But we do also, like Dougs had put together custom packages.
Usually they're available by email or our Facebook page or
you can call us and we'll put together something custom
for you that will also have some special pricing on there.
And then of course Doug has a promo code. If
you use the promo code Doug, that's going to save
you on shipping on all orders.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Elizabeth Miller from the folks at calddren. Thanks Elizabeth. Back
on the American family farmer families or folks that grew
up on the farm and then they moved away and
after that they wish they could go back again. But
because it's very difficult I mean, I can tell you
(13:02):
the same thing. If I didn't have the other sources
of income that I do, I couldn't do what I do.
And that really flies in the face of reality. It
kind of if I were to get into a dark place,
and I don't want to do it because the farm
gets me out of being in dark places. But it's disgusting,
it really is. It's a disgusting reality that people can't
(13:23):
make a living on farming, whether unless they have hundreds
and hundreds of thousands and thousands of cows, or unless
they have hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of
acres to grow various crops on. It just isn't that
certainly isn't the way America realized how important farming was.
But that's where it is at the moment. And so
(13:45):
you ask the question, as I did a few weeks ago,
or maybe it was a month or so ago, it
is farming really worth it? So you heard this gentleman
David Buck. It is to him, it is to his wife,
It is to the people in that community because because
they have learned to respect, there isn't much going on.
So if they see somebody who's trying and struggling and
(14:07):
working to make it happen, then there is support if
there's knowledge in the community. In some circumstances there is,
and some circumstances there isn't, and so the ignorance becomes
I don't want to be negative, but the ignorance when
it comes to farming and produce and milk and stuff
(14:29):
is just absolutely flooring. And that's really one of the
reasons that people get off the farm because it isn't
worth it to them. If you grow up on the
farm and you know this couple, he works part time,
she works full time. That's the way they do it.
And how often do we hear those stories about people
(14:49):
Maybe you're in that circumstance. As I glance around and
see how this all takes place, you know, again, whether
it's dairy or whether it's produce, whether it's you're growing food,
whether you're growing beans or corn, whatever it is that
you're doing. I was mentioning earlier a little bit about
(15:09):
seeds and what we are doing with seeds, and I
didn't have much time to get into that. There are
several different things that come out of growing. There are
a lot of farms that grow corn and beans for
the seeds, and so as part of the spotlight on
what goes on. There are a lot of people who
(15:30):
think that vegetable oil seeds like soybeans are not good.
Seed oils are healthier than saturated fat alternatives, and so
that's helped move that's those seed oils up the scale.
There are others who say that you know, a lot
of major health conditions come from it. People will tell
(15:51):
you that about milk. They'll tell you that about most anything.
The unwashed don't realize. And I had this conversation with
the gentleman who wants me to take He's a ninety
one year old farmer in a town not far from me,
and he's still milking cows, and he doesn't know how
long you can hold on. And he wanted to know
if I could help, and I said, certainly I would
(16:12):
and could because I respect what he's done. He was
a firefighter. He was the chief of the fire department
in this town, and so he'd go to work every day.
He'd get up in the morning and he'd milk sixty
cows and then he'd go to he'd go to the
fire station and be there all day, and then he'd
come home at night and he his wife would milk
sixty cows again, and that's what he grew up around,
(16:34):
and that's what he loves. So it was worth it
for him to work twelve fourteen hours a day, seven
days a week. How many of those people who are
still around is the question, And that the same thing
applies whether it's dairy or I think beans and corn,
and a lot of the things that are happening on
(16:55):
production farms or local farms are doing produce six to
eight month a year the business, and so they have
three or four months a year to travel or to
plan or do whatever. And that's not the way it
is with the dairy farmer. And so there's a movement
or has been a movement away from the farmer. Has
you heard David Bucks say, is a movement back? He's
(17:17):
certainly a good example of a movement back to the farm.
Raised a lot of questions here talking about dairy, talking
about farming in general, and seeds and saving seeds and
what you do with those that make it difficult for you,
and thus a mixed bag of answers to the question
(17:37):
is farming farming really worth it? You hear the enthusiasm
in David Buck's voice in mind, and you know that
it is worth it. So hopefully you have that attitude
and we can do a lot to instill it as
we continue here every week on The American Family Farmer.
I'm Doug Stefan. This program was produced at bob Ka
Sound and Recording. Please visit bobksound dot com. The American
(17:59):
Family Farmer podcast sponsored in part by Caldron, which is
the safe way for you to lose weight and keep
it off.
The American Family Farmer podcast sponsored in part by Caldron,
The Safe proven Way to Lose weight. Check it all
out at toploss dot com. I'm Doug Stephan. This is
the American Family Farmer. I think I'm gonna preface. I
was going to say this has been but I think
this has been a pretty good summer for most people
except for dairy. The prices for milk at the pool
(00:24):
have gone down, down, down, because when the price of
milk goes up, everybody buys more. Cows produces too much milk.
So let's visit dairy as we go into the farm news.
I guess if you are a student of all of this,
and I am, even though I'm not milking cows at
the moment. I raised jersey replacement heifers, and I have
(00:44):
a bow Bai sanctuary on my farm, which is Eastley
Ea S T L E I G. H. Easlely Farm.
You can find Eastlelyfarm dot com and find it on
Facebook Instagram, as some of you have done. I think
last week I made mention of a fellow who sent
me a pretty name note. He found me through going
to Eastlee Farm, which is fine. So anyway, milk futures
(01:07):
have dropped. A lot of seventeen bucks production have served
all over the country. There are more cows, producing more
milk per animal, and there has been some price support
from the strong cheese and butter export business. But look
at the numbers. I'm looking at a graph now. Cheese
(01:28):
exports are up twenty nine percent from last year, but
Class three milk futures are just below seventeen dollars. We've
got a lot of supply. The growing trend of increased
milk production started early this year. But as I said,
this has been something I remember this all every time
(01:51):
this happens in my life, I've seen the same thing
happened and this is no exception. The most recent milk
production report at the production total nineteen zero point five
to seven billion pounds. That's up three point four percent
from the same time last year. More cows producing more milk.
(02:16):
It is pretty interesting from a marketing perspective because production
is so huge, but we have more and more farmers
with more and more. Is one guy milking ten thousand
cows in one area I saw, there's still a twenty
twenty thousand head at a farm in Indiana. The average
(02:37):
is thirty four pounds per cow, which is up somewhat.
I'm talking about nationally. That doesn't seem like a lot actually,
but when you take into account cows at various stages
of their lactation, demand has stayed firm. The most recent
US dairy export reports show the total of dairy exports
(03:01):
at two hundred and forty eight six hundred metric tons
last month. That's up ten percent from the same month
last year. I guess this is going to reflect on
the number of dairy cattle. Heffer inventories are not rebounding,
and they may not now for a couple of years,
(03:22):
so it's hard to forecast live births and full grown
dairy replacements that will be entering into milking herds. The
dairy industry. Let's see here. I guess I would use
the word unique at this point. The limits or the
heights the numbers are unseen before beef sales, contributing a
(03:50):
larger portion to dairy farm profitability because of the numbers.
And this is what's been happening. Cows have been bred
into a beef or you know Normandy's big cows that
when they finished their lactation have a lot of beef.
Dairy farmers are looking to maintain or grow they're herd
because of the prices for cows. I'm just looking at
(04:14):
the price of semen here us dairy farmers made significant
changes in semen purchases. In the last year. Gender sorted
seamen sales grew by one point five million units, represented
an incredible seventeen percent growth rate in one year. Wow,
(04:35):
eas aly, and there's not I sort of went into
when I was still using AI, I use just a
bull put in. This is the old fashioned way, but
I like it because I'm only going to do thirty
or forty cows a year, and the bull's fine. I'm
talking about breeding. Well, you have a fifty to fifty
(04:57):
chance of a half our bull. Then there's this the
sordid seamen, the sext semen, and they say that the
number of units was up. There dairy farmers keeping an
eye on the beef market. However, though, and it doesn't
make any difference in that circumstance, the sex semen business
(05:18):
was down because the value of what comes out is
the same, whether to have her or bull. And so again,
as I said, looking at the future of dairy heifer's
two d and twenty one thousand more beef on dairy
calves born this year, one hundred and ninety two thousand
(05:40):
fewer dairy calves reaching the completion rate. And so I
have because I'm in the dairy replacement business. I look
at those numbers, fifty six and twenty seven more dairy
replacements this year than last year. Okay, so I can
go through these numbers. I think it's trends that are
(06:01):
more interesting. People find numbers to be boring. So there
it is. That's my update on the dairy business and
where we all are, according to facts and figures from
various sources, including the banks, including the USDA, etc. Etc. Okay,
let's talk about something else that's important in terms of numbers.
(06:22):
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have
had success. They have had powerful success using calitrin to
lose weight and keep it off. Go to toploss dot com,
which is the website for a Caldron and find a
very strong resource there that will help you with your
(06:43):
weight loss program, your ideas. Get support from a counselor
because they have them available for you. All you going
to do is ask and you can talk to somebody
on the phone every week often as you want to
just to get the information. You can easily find out
what the formula is by going online to top looss
dot com, or when you buy the product, you look
(07:05):
at it and say, wow, look at this. So if
you're not feeling like you, if you're upset because you
haven't felt good for a while, you're aging. Of course,
and maybe depending on your lifestyle, your diet, your bodies
are producing less collagen protein. That's the main ingredient, main
ingredient in Caldron, also all kinds of other things that
(07:28):
help you lose weight, the non toxicoid. Please go to
a top loss dot com and check out what's there.
Use the DOUG code on all your orders over fifty
dollars and you get the best deal of the day,
the best deal of the day customers tell the story
by the way at top loss dot com. But you
can shop their sales every weekend use the DOUG code
(07:49):
and you won't have to pay for shipping either. It's
a great product with great results, and you want that
number one choice for natural weight loss and wellness Caldron
at top looss dot com. Okay, let's talk about the numbers.
I guess. I said, I didn't want to become a statistician,
but I was looking at some numbers of who owns
what farm. This is an update, I guess on the
(08:12):
real numbers. Family farms comprise ninety five percent of all
US farms according to the egg Census from the USDA.
The Farm Typology Report, which I find interesting, focuses on
the family farm defined as any farm where the majority
of the business is owned by the producer and individuals
(08:33):
related to the producer. So the classification here of all
farms the various unique categories. There are two criteria for
that who owns the operation and the gross cache farm income,
and that includes a producers sale of crops and livestock,
fees for delivering commodities under prorection contracts, that sort of thing.
(08:56):
One point nine million farms in America. One point point
nine million farms. The data show that small family farms,
let's see, with the less income than three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year, account for eighty five percent
of all the farms, thirty nine percent of total land
in farms, and fourteen percent of the value of all
(09:16):
agricultural products. So you can see where the large scale
family farms are headed, that is, the farms that make
a million bucks or more a year. They are only
four percent though, of all the US farms. Let's see
what else in this informative piece. The number of family
farms decreased by eight percent in the last ten years,
(09:38):
so that means we've lost one hundred and sixty thousand
farms in America. This is very dangerous, very very dangerous.
The number of small family farms fell ten percent. Let's
see the numbers going back to the hundred and fifty
thousand a year or a million a year. The million
a year of farms down seven percent, so the bigger
(10:01):
farms are down less than the smaller farms. Let's see
what other key findings are here that I can report
on farm specialization varied between the farm size fifty six
percent of small farms specialized in cattle, thirty one percent
we're doing hay and forage production, sixty thousand farms. Mid
(10:26):
sized farms specialized in grains and seeds. Large scale farms
were more varied. So the seed thing, that's a really
interestingly report on seed size and how many. This is
controversy because there's this whole business about saving seeds and
(10:47):
how you can you know, use your own this. It
depends on where you buy the seeds. It's that simple.
I have long since been someone who when talking about
the what you do with your seeds if you buy
them from Monsanto or Bayer, and I guess there's some
others who are doing mostly Monsanta, le'll suya. If you
try to use the seeds over again, many of them
(11:08):
are now engineered so that you can't use them over again.
Soybean oil and oil seeds, I thought this is interesting,
make up sixty percent of the market share for food oils,
row crop commodities, soybeans and things like that. When crushed,
soybean oil is used for food or biofuel production, and
(11:32):
then the rest of it is consumed as animal feed.
So the question on some of these people's minds as
I've gone through all these numbers here, and I think
I asked this question a few weeks ago, or maybe
a month ago, is farming really worth it? I'm Doug Stefan,
and she's not. She could be Elizabeth Miller. However, as
a matter of fact, she is. Elizabeth Miller is one
(11:55):
of the great reasons for going to toploss dot Com
and engage in the work of Caltron getting that weight
off the natural way.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Caldron is different than everything else up there because it's
really good for you. It's actually drug free, stimulant free,
so it's good for you. We've been helping customers since
nineteen ninety seven. It's that's over two hundred thousand happy customers,
so I know that we just helped people all over
the United States lose weight. So if you go to
toploss dot com, you'll see the calendri and sell right there.
(12:24):
But we do also, like Dougs had put together custom packages.
Usually they're available by email or our Facebook page or
you can call us and we'll put together something custom
for you that will also have some special pricing on there.
And then of course Doug has a promo code. If
you use the promo code Doug, that's going to save
you on shipping on all orders.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Elizabeth Miller from the folks at calddren. Thanks Elizabeth. Back
on the American family farmer families or folks that grew
up on the farm and then they moved away and
after that they wish they could go back again. But
because it's very difficult I mean, I can tell you
(13:02):
the same thing. If I didn't have the other sources
of income that I do, I couldn't do what I do.
And that really flies in the face of reality. It
kind of if I were to get into a dark place,
and I don't want to do it because the farm
gets me out of being in dark places. But it's disgusting,
it really is. It's a disgusting reality that people can't
(13:23):
make a living on farming, whether unless they have hundreds
and hundreds of thousands and thousands of cows, or unless
they have hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of
acres to grow various crops on. It just isn't that
certainly isn't the way America realized how important farming was.
But that's where it is at the moment. And so
(13:45):
you ask the question, as I did a few weeks ago,
or maybe it was a month or so ago, it
is farming really worth it? So you heard this gentleman
David Buck. It is to him, it is to his wife,
It is to the people in that community because because
they have learned to respect, there isn't much going on.
So if they see somebody who's trying and struggling and
(14:07):
working to make it happen, then there is support if
there's knowledge in the community. In some circumstances there is,
and some circumstances there isn't, and so the ignorance becomes
I don't want to be negative, but the ignorance when
it comes to farming and produce and milk and stuff
(14:29):
is just absolutely flooring. And that's really one of the
reasons that people get off the farm because it isn't
worth it to them. If you grow up on the
farm and you know this couple, he works part time,
she works full time. That's the way they do it.
And how often do we hear those stories about people
(14:49):
Maybe you're in that circumstance. As I glance around and
see how this all takes place, you know, again, whether
it's dairy or whether it's produce, whether it's you're growing food,
whether you're growing beans or corn, whatever it is that
you're doing. I was mentioning earlier a little bit about
(15:09):
seeds and what we are doing with seeds, and I
didn't have much time to get into that. There are
several different things that come out of growing. There are
a lot of farms that grow corn and beans for
the seeds, and so as part of the spotlight on
what goes on. There are a lot of people who
(15:30):
think that vegetable oil seeds like soybeans are not good.
Seed oils are healthier than saturated fat alternatives, and so
that's helped move that's those seed oils up the scale.
There are others who say that you know, a lot
of major health conditions come from it. People will tell
(15:51):
you that about milk. They'll tell you that about most anything.
The unwashed don't realize. And I had this conversation with
the gentleman who wants me to take He's a ninety
one year old farmer in a town not far from me,
and he's still milking cows, and he doesn't know how
long you can hold on. And he wanted to know
if I could help, and I said, certainly I would
(16:12):
and could because I respect what he's done. He was
a firefighter. He was the chief of the fire department
in this town, and so he'd go to work every day.
He'd get up in the morning and he'd milk sixty
cows and then he'd go to he'd go to the
fire station and be there all day, and then he'd
come home at night and he his wife would milk
sixty cows again, and that's what he grew up around,
(16:34):
and that's what he loves. So it was worth it
for him to work twelve fourteen hours a day, seven
days a week. How many of those people who are
still around is the question, And that the same thing
applies whether it's dairy or I think beans and corn,
and a lot of the things that are happening on
(16:55):
production farms or local farms are doing produce six to
eight month a year the business, and so they have
three or four months a year to travel or to
plan or do whatever. And that's not the way it
is with the dairy farmer. And so there's a movement
or has been a movement away from the farmer. Has
you heard David Bucks say, is a movement back? He's
(17:17):
certainly a good example of a movement back to the farm.
Raised a lot of questions here talking about dairy, talking
about farming in general, and seeds and saving seeds and
what you do with those that make it difficult for you,
and thus a mixed bag of answers to the question
(17:37):
is farming farming really worth it? You hear the enthusiasm
in David Buck's voice in mind, and you know that
it is worth it. So hopefully you have that attitude
and we can do a lot to instill it as
we continue here every week on The American Family Farmer.
I'm Doug Stefan. This program was produced at bob Ka
Sound and Recording. Please visit bobksound dot com. The American
(17:59):
Family Farmer podcast sponsored in part by Caldron, which is
the safe way for you to lose weight and keep
it off.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com