IT CAN COST MILLIONS TO RUN FOR CONGRESS. WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHAT DOES IT BUY?
How long has your family been farming here?
Let’s see, there was my great-granddad, he lived over here in Earlem, and then he had three boys, which would have been my grandpa and they moved over here back oh probably in 1910 or fifteen and my great granddad went on the wheat runs.
When he wasn’t doing a little bit of the farming, down in Kansas and clear up into Canada and my grandpa and the boys pretty well raised themselves. That’s how they started farming They was all farmers, and then my dad and my uncle, Kenny, were farmers for years, and where I live is where my dad was born and where I was born. And so we got four generations over here that I know of so far. So that’s all I know from my time beings that as far as we checked back.
How has it been for family farmers in the past 20 years?
Well, we went through high interest rates, been through several droughts, low prices; it’s been tough. There’s if we got decent prices all the way through and not interest rates, I’d say a lot of the young farm boys would still be out here, but the times were tough.
We’ve borrowed money, and there’s such a thing as you can only mortgage so far, three times is too much and what you do is you just tighten your belt. You can’t have them big fancy outfits and everything, you tighten your belt through the years cause there’s just too many things to go wrong. Just like the grain, you can have it up four dollars and if it rains real good, you’re down a dollar off of that within a couple weeks drop the corn down to the limit.
I’d say the eighties were the toughest and through the high interest rates. And then we got into where you have to be subsidized because the corn prices were so low and it was pretty good up through the first four of the Clinton years. And then it leveled out and then the corporate people got their ideas in there to get their more control of the grain and everything.
So see you’re subsidized there because a dollar fifty corn won’t pay for the fertilizing and won’t pay for the seed. Let alone the cash rent to rent the ground. So they just keep you right on a bare minimum there to keep it’s like bein’ in a pond and you’re drowin and you got your head above water, it’s the same thing. They just keep you happy enough to keep your head above water so you can breathe for another year. But there’s a lot of people that farm, and a lot of times it will burn ya’ out, you get tired of it and that’s why a lot of the young guys quit. And insurance wise and everything, and when you’re workin’ eight hours a day all your problems are left out.
If you see my last documentary, it was in eighty-six, and that’s when the corporations, I said, would start coming in, and that’s been what twenty-one years ago? And they’ve been creepin’ in comin’ a little slower every time, and like I said, I think the high interest rates. I think the high interest rates is what started breakin’ all of ‘em. A lot of young farmer’s went broke; they just couldn’t keep up with the times and everything, so they gotta loan their money to somebody that’ll do bigger and bigger and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
It’s just like down at the AFC office twenty years ago I knew the AFC Director real good and he said that the plans was back then twenty years ago was to get rid of all the farmers, but twenty-five and farm that many acres, farm a county. So and I think they’re gonna if we don’t put a stop to it that’s gonna to happen pretty quick. Faster than you think. I don’t know what the purpose is, but you know I mean it’s there’s I don’t. It’s not to me to my advantage to be a big farmer.
You can’t find the help now I don’t know what their advantage is it must be just be a thrill to them. I farm three thousand acres and it after my dad passed away I had fifteen hundred and he had fifteen hundred and let me tell ya another extra fifteen hundred acres just plum wore me out, burnt me out.
So I started cutting back and cutting back and now I’m back down to fifteen hundred and I’m a lot happier. You just you know you can’t get help and when they you do get help they break your equipment you’re workin’ on it all the time and then if you got them runnin’ in one field. You’re tryin’ to keep another the dryin’ bins going you’re runnin’ back and forth you’re fixin’ semi’s and then it just burns you out.
You know and you can’t afford to hire somebody to come out and fix everything or you just as well quit anyway if you can’t do most of it yourself you just will quit. That’s my theory of a farmer, a workin’ farmer, if he’s workin on his own machinery and keeping busy everyday you know that’s what I call a farmer, a workin’ farmer. Work on your own stuff cause there’s a little bit of pride left in workin’ on your own stuff than havin’ somebody come out and hired done. You know I mean it’s just what that’s that’s where the big business comes in you come in and throw it in the ground here. Slam it in and then slam it out you know I mean there just ain’t any pride in it anymore.
Is there something to be said for a more manageable size farm in terms of conservation?
I’d say somebody like me that. Today fifteen hundred acres hours, you still put in a lot of hours you know at fifteen hundred acres if you’re doin’ it yourself even with the equipment you got today. It’s you see it’s just like cash flowin’, you can only afford so much of this and you can only afford so much of that and you can’t afford a lot of labor because our margin on profit is so thin you know if you spent thirty thousand dollars on good help well that might have been your livin’ that year see.
So it’s just it’s so thin and then like I said you have problems with weather and you have problems with controlled prices and it’s just thinned out enough that you just can’t. You gotta watch what you do every day on this. You know I like I said ah if you’s going ta’ work you know where you’re going ta’ work everyday and you know at the end of the week you got your paycheck. This is a year to year deal that’s the only bad thing about it. About farmin’ it’s just a year to year.
And you gotta kinda’ like it a little bit, but if you get if you go through hard times and that if you get my age now you get a little. You get discouraged a lot of times but that there’s always another year. Well my brother didn’t. He quit when he knew he had it you know when he went broke. He gave up and went and done somethin’ else and now he’s pretty happy with what he’s doing you know but. I held in here I suppose it was because of uh four generations you know. That’s more pride than anything you know, but. Sometimes that pride can get you in a lot of trouble.
Do you have enough help to farm sustainably, with the environment in mind?
You got Tom Harken, which is really good to keep the conservation up uh you’ve got other people like I’ll say well Farm Bureau they’re always talkin’ like you know real good on conservation, but most of the Farm Bureau members around here aren’t very conservationist and that’s the truth. They’re. They just.
They work against Tom Harken and people like us that wanna’ be conservation you know you know like waterways you oughta keep them in and keep headlands in from the dirt washin’ down and the silt and there is good stewards, but the good ones are the small ones. It’s not the big ones. Cause the big ones ain’t got time to come in here and they’ll come in and ah you got nice waterways.
Let’s say you had a farm and you worked cause to put conservation and good headlands and waterways and everything on your ground it takes a period of years. To really stagger this it takes about ten years. To really get to lookin’ nice and it’ll take and you decide you wanna quit farmin’ and retire and you wanna rent that ground that you worked on uh let’s say fifty years of your life makin nice and keepin’ it nice and keepin’ the weeds and all the conservation stuff on it.
They can ruin that in two years cause with this Round-Up and the chemicals they this big equipment they just they just spray through everything and kill all that and that all washes down in the rivers and every everywhere and the muddy Mississippi is muddier now than it was before and the big guys are the poorest conservationist that you can find. Cause they haven’t got time ta’ do it.
They just come in and spray it. Spray everything, keep the weeds down and they’re out. Cause of all the big equipment. That was probably one of our weakest points as far as technology goes. Is we’ve got everything all fancied up like I was tellin’ you about my combine I don’t even know how run that other new one. I can drive it down the road.
But technology has helped to ruin because of all the big equipment but they’re getting better at it. They figured out that to control the grass and headlands they’re usin’ GPS and you can mark out on your ground because evidently they gotta do it to ordinary to keep from sprayin’ everything out and killin’ all the waterways and everything cause it all goes to one place it goes down into your wells, it goes down the rivers and in your drinkin’ water. Lot’s of it are going into your drinking water when they pull it out of the roots you know.
Why is there a Farm Bill that doesn’t encourage conservation?
That. There’s a lot of theories on that. My theory is the Farm Bill…they’re gonna have a Farm Bill no matter what I don’t care what. The Farm Bill is you’re talkin’ billions and billions of dollars, but you’ve got your commodity market at the Board of Trade and there’s a lot of people that make money off the Board of Trade.
So you got conservation on one end and you got other people like Farm Bureau sayin’ tear up your ground on the other end to keep the ethanol plants going. So your conservation is gone away with and you have you wanna be ordinary conservationist if you’re in the program and you’re not doing it right they kick ya’ out.
They’ll penalize you and you kick it out and you pay back that year’s ah subsidy payments, but I haven’t never seen a big one get kicked out yet. A big farmer because they’re too big see and they don’t want to start a scandal. So what they’ll do, most of your government people to ordinary to keep safe from the state and the federal out at Washington, D.C. is they’ll go find somebody like me or they’ll find somebody that’s doin’ good conservation and put that down on their paper and that gets them by, cause that saves their job see. They won’t go out and go on big farmers cause there no waterways and hardly any headlands or anything self worsh.
But then you can’t have your commodity markets pushing you to plant more corn and tear up this ground because of the ethanol. This year they already said well we haven’t got enough ethanol for all these ah ethanol plants. Well now we’re gonna’ have a glut of ethanol because we can’t get rid of the ethanol because it’s corrosive you know you gotta use stainless steel and ah so now this year we’ve got nine million or nine million I think nine more million acres of corn in and the corn dropped a whole dollar because of ah more corn, but what what’s the use in growin’ it if you ah can’t get rid of it? This is what I don’t understand.
And this is how the free market always works I mean they always they haven’t got it and then all the sudden they change ah the market values and raise the corn prices right up and if you don’t do it right now I gave it if you don’t do it within three months at a high price she’ll be back, I’ve seen it before it’ll drop a dollar you know because we raised too much grain.
The ethanol plants are doing exceptionally well you know, but ten percent which should be at least forty percent ethanol outta be all over the country because I think we got enough grain to care of it anyway you know I mean it’s just simple. Look at this year, we can’t even get rid of the alcohol now and when you can’t get rid of the alcohol that means less usage for a byproduct of it so everything drops to the ground again. What goes up must come down.
Why aren’t the interest of family farmer’s addressed by gov’t?
I don’t know. That’s puzzled me for years anyway you know? But today I think it’s just big money it’s just plain and simple big money I mean I don’t know why you wanna be a great big farmer I really have no idea you know If you can get along on a thousand or four hundred acres I don’t know why you wanna. It’s big money. You know.
I think Barbara was tellin’ you when ya’ like the hog confinements. There’s no veterinarians no more, cause they got rid of the veterinarians cause they got their own veterinarians you know. And I think it’s gonna get to the time like the big farmers is they’re gonna have their own full time mechanics all year round you know cause they ain’t gonna be able to afford to trade forever you know. They’ll buy new equipment in one year and get rid of it see.
As far as the government goes on this, they subsidize the big farmers heavily I didn’t even know for a couple years was going along there I didn’t even know we used to have a fifty thousand dollar limitation was all ya’ could get. It didn’t make no difference how much you was farmin.’ And ah it was just fifty thousand dollars a year and that was about seven years ago maybe eight years ago. All the sudden you heard going on here was up to four hundred thousand.
So that let the big boys come in here. So they was farmin’ for the governor especially when the prices was low you know got the subsidy payment and then we got the LD payment. The corn got real low below ah ceiling price that would have been a dollar eighty and then you got your subsidy and that went down to a dollar forty so you made forty cents more on that LDP and that put you back up to twenty see.
So you played that and you got tired of playin’ that and everything and it’s just one yo-yo to another you get so damn tired of it.
What’s you sense on policy being shaped to favor the big guys?
Well see you get back into the commodity markets see. Ah you got big farmers is got a lot of commodities there they might have fat cattle you know big lot’s of fat cattle and they got lot’s of grain and they’re gonna be their best interest where their most money’s at.
They’re not going to be on to a smaller farmer because they can’t make any money off of that. And insurance like Farm Bureau they’ll protect the bigger guys because they got insurance premiums there you know. The bigger guys are usually Farm Bureau guys and they that’s money. That’s a lot pretty good size premium because see you’re controlled in that one premium if they’ve got five big twenty thousand acre farmers that are where the Farm Bureau couldn’t get the smaller guys because they went to independent. See? So it’s all money. It’s controlled.
And the Farm Bureau lobbies everyday while we’re sleepin’ they’re lobbyin.’ How to make more money and make the bigger guys more money see the, it’s just a continuous thing on that and so their influence. Our government you know representatives and congressman, senators are all influenced by this money or otherwise if they cared about the small farmer they’d be out here doin’ somethin’ about it.
And it’s, and it’s just all going over there and then see you got John Deere and K-Side Eights they’re gonna make bigger money with the high technology. You know to get bigger and bigger and bigger everybody all in a vertical integration to make it.
And the government’s in on em’ like your representative. They’re influenced by big time money or otherwise we wouldn’t have hog confinements in your back yard. You know it’s all influenced and I found out this year that’s it’s from not only one other party it’s from another party.
So you’re just changin’ one hand to the other because and it’s very disappointing you know if you had one party that you voted in like this last year the Democrats they went on that ticket on like local control you know and that’s what they got in on and we didn’t get local control.
What’s going on in Des Moines that stopped local control?
It’s money. The local control is where it. Farm Bureau wouldn’t have any and your other like ADM and Cargill wouldn’t have any control over ya’ if you had local control and I don’t think. I think the down in Des Moines at the state house I think they ‘fraid if you go a little too much control it goes a little further well they want local control, they’re controlling their county and we have nothin’ to do with it ya’ know?
It’s like bein’ a small farmer ah if ya’ start off that way, the bigger ones take over like let’s say the bigger farmer’s control. If you don’t let the little local control it you have somebody a hundred miles from here comin’ down like farmin’ your ground or puttin’ in a hog house.
And I know I think the state house and they don’t like that local control because it’s smaller government see? They wanna’ keep that big government so they got more control. They have their control, but they won’t let us have our local control.
What’s your take on our modern democracy?
Well I don’t know I thought slavery quit back in the Civil War. You know it’s a lot of people are talking out here that you’re just you get propaganda on the free market, it’s a controlled market all the time.
Just like I was tellin’ you, you have a big farmer that has two hundred thousand bushels to sell in one day and he’ll take it to the local market well that’ll drop so that’s a controlled comparin’ to the smaller farmer because he hasn’t got volume like that. And it’s volume you know just like your hog deals it’s volume but I don’t know.
I don’t even know how this is gonna’ I outta like I said corporations take over twenty years ago and they are. And then just gets bigger you know. But I think as we go on we’re havin’ more people startin’ to realize that it’s time for another change.
And as far as Jefferson I don’t think planned on it because I think he planned on everybody havin’ so many acres and makin’ a livin’ off the ground you know. And you don’t farmers back then when we settled this ground you wanna remember the rural people were the ones that voted and voted for everybody in office. You can go clear up to ah oh just be during the Depression in the forties it was seventy five percent was controlled by rural area now ya’ only have one point six or seven percent. That’s not no control anymore. And you don’t have no power see? You’re just outnumbered, that’s just like a big farmer and a little farmer, you’re outnumbered. But there’s still a lot of little farmer’s you know.
But then the theory is it’s always ah the minority never gets anything and the, I mean the majority never gets anything and the minority does. The bigger you are the more you get.
Have you noticed any changes in local health?
Yeah, we got cancer. I don’t know whether it’s from the chemicals. Like my dad he died of cancer, sixty three years old and I don’t know if I’ll get cancer, which it runs in the family but yeah I think it’s the environment and I he –
I remember when I was a kid four and five years old ridin’ with him sprayin’ corn out in the corn field cause that’s all the chemical they had was two four D. And that’s all the chemical we had but. And he come in just soaked from that two four D. Now how do you know that didn’t stay in his system all his life and help his cancer come along you know?
Yeah I think we’re havin’ with the chemicals we’re havin, we’re havin’ my age group back in the I’d say the fifties when it started comin’ out little bit at a time you know. Then we went through a period in the sixties there where we wouldn’t our USDA wasn’t even checkin’ on em’ and checkin’ that close enough to see what the after effects are.
Ah like my dad I think a lot of that and then he had a hog confinement in my place and I think between the two combinations all his life and in a hog confinement I went down there and picked him out of that hog confinement because he was almost collapsed he couldn’t breathe from that dirty dust and everything
And so ah we went up to the house and I told him, I said you know I believe your grandpa, my grandpa told him when he got to farmin’ night and day when he was small that he was, he was doin’ custom work and everything tryin’ ta make a livin’.
He was milkin’ cows one day and he was out there at four o’clock in the morning and dad was in there complain’ and everything. My grandpa comes up and he goes “Donny if the cows are gonna’ kill you, you better get rid of ‘em” So he did. He loaded ‘em up, didn’t take him to long he just wanted some advice from his dad or something.
Loaded ‘em up and got rid of ‘em and he got stock cows in he quit milkin’ cows and that’s the same thing I told dad I said you know dad this hog confinement is gonna’ kill ya’ I said you gotta get rid of it. I said they ain’t worth nothin’ anyway I said they won’t let you make any money on it. I said where you gonna take ‘em anyway?
But he’s the old farmer type he wanted to keep raisin’ cattle raisin’ hogs and he didn’t have to kill anything. You know just from the environment and I’m not sayin’ that I’m fifty-nine I’m not sayin’ cause I was in part of that environment that he was in ya’ know from the chemicals.
The chemicals didn’t really start until I was born and raised then. So I ah anybody my age would have the same environment as they are. Only I think through the years we’re getting’ better in our later years of keepin’ cleaned up you know we wear masks and that bean dust, and corn dust But no the environment will kill ya.
And I, and it is, and it is bad. How do we know what’s in our water anymore? They’re not gonna’ tell ya’ that’d put that’d throw a scare on anyone. And but and if it’s so good why is all we hear is rural water rural water rural water. Does the government know stuff that we don’t? Why are they pushin’ rural water to come out here on a farm when we used to have wells all over. Is that tellin’ you somethin’? That tells me that our water not very good.
Another propaganda part. That’s what they’ll say well take away their subsidies and we’ll see if that can do that efficient or not. No I’d say your thousand acre there’s several guys around here couple guys that are eighty years old right here and farm about thousand acres and they’re eighty!
But I didn’t ever see them get bigger through their lifetime. And they know what they can handle and their pretty efficient you know I mean the bigger you are the non-efficient you are. And the bigger you are and the chemical companies come in and says well we gotta’ make it more efficient so you can now what are we puttin’ on this to make it more efficient?
You know what kind of chemicals are we using to make it more efficient? Is it harmful? They’re not gonna’ tell ya’ they’re not gonna’ do that. It’s just like I told ya’ on my dad. 24D back then would be probably about like Agent Orange was in Vietnam, so that’s pretty strong stuff. And over the years they got testin’ and it does get into your fat particles in your body and stays there all your life.
Are you hesitant about swimming in local surface waters?
Yeah, I wouldn’t I don’t know if I’d wanna’ do it like when we was kids like then you get back before chemicals really got into effect. We’ve got this ground so polluted with like Anthrozine. There’s still Anthrozine you can dig down ten or twelve feet and there’s Anthrozine, that ain’t good for your ground water.
They claim this Round-Up on your Round-Up beans is non-toxic but that’s what Monsanto but and DuPont says they got their chemicals too. How do we know that? We’re always findin’ somethin’ out about twenty years later, when it’s too late. Just like my dad it was and his doctor’s said it was environmental, pesticides, herbicides, and hog a hog house you know it was all it all had to do with that.
You know I don’t remember, that was my generation, of dad’s generation most of his uh from these chemicals and everything most of his generation’s gone. And I’m serious their they was gone when they was about anywhere from fifty some of ‘em was lucky to make it, but the one’s that I noticed that never that was his age like when he went to school they weren’t farmers though.
They’re eighty are and eighty-one years old, but they didn’t get to live them extra. They got to live them extra twenty years, but not a lot of my neighborhood did because of the environmental part of it the chemicals and stuff. And the big farmer if he went back to the chemicals like we had ten years ago before Round-Up and all that, he couldn’t raise a good crop if you was out there twenty-four hours a day.
You can’t cultivate the ground and stir the ground and tear the weeds out fast enough. That’s why Round-Up came in. That’s for the big boys it is really for everybody it does it does it is the easy way to clean up out your bean fields.
But here we come again. When we gonna’ find out twenty years from now. Well we’re pushin’ that now. It’s been out about that long it’s pushin’ that before it really got ta’ goin’. We got chemicals out there that we have no idea what’s it’s really doin’ and it is it’s in the ground water. Otherwise we wouldn’t be a seein’ rural water and big water towers bein’ put up everywhere.
The government knows somethin’ that we don’t know and if you can get them to tell ya. But then what does that do? That’s panic. You know it’s just like our tainted beef and our pork. It’s like I was tellin’ ya’ earlier I said we grow the good pork and beef and ship it overseas cause of your trades on your exporting and importing and they give us their bad meat back and they put it in our hamburgers as fillers and everything you know.
I don’t know if I’d like that. I don’t think anybody’d like that I’d want I would want my own pork and beef out of this country and not out China or. I just don’t think that’s right.
Can we fix government?
Well like I said it’s global now. Boy I don’t know how you’re gonna’. I just don’t I know what we’re gonna’ do. I mean if it was me I’d stop it right now, I’d stop a lot of. You wanna remember we’ve got diseases we that comes over here ta’ the United States from ah tradin’ back when our we never had no diseases of cholera or anything like that or anything or TB back when the Indians were here.
They didn’t they didn’t die because the our American troops were troops matter fact they were getting’ whipped by the Indians it was the cholera and everything that killed the Indians cause they didn’t have a disease over here. And that’s the same thing you’re gonna get from globalization. We’re gettin’ so many bugs and diseases shipped over here everyday that I don’t know how they’re gonna’ keep up with that.
What’ll happen is we’ll it’s just gonna kill ya’ off you know. You just can’t have other diseases goin’ in here there’s no way to control. It’s too global you know there’s a time that ya’ gotta stop.
Any way to put a stop to lobbyist?
Yeah the publicly financed shh that’d be the one thing that I would get changed right now. But then you come back to the public financing again and if you’s ah yourself if you’s down there and you was getting’ a little under the table the money here and you was makin’ a little money here bein’ a representative.
Are you gonna’ vote your own self out of a job? You’re not gonna’ vote your self out of a job. So this is why we don’t get public financing and that would be the one way to get decent talent in this country. Because you’ve got my neighbor’s is got a lot talent when you get ta’ talkin’ to em’ and everything. Everybody’s got talent for everything they get they do in life. Everybody I don’t care has got talent. It’s just that you gotta find the right place for it. But you you’ve got.
There you come back again it’s big money and you don’t all’s you gotta do is go along and agree whether it’s right or wrong and ah that’s what controls it. It all comes back to money but if the public finances it you’re only allowed so much money and that’s it you know and you still get a run on the ticket.
And I think that that should be passed. But like I said if you’re gonna’ vote yourself out of a job, you’re not gonna’ vote that in.
Do farmer’s not know chemicals are harmful?
Well, you it’s somethin’ bout you know you’re livin’ in United States of America here and if you had a bunch of people that say it’s good to jump off of a cliff I think they’d all jump off of a cliff cause that’s part of the American way.
You know and if they say use this chemical this is good and this’ll do it you know like it said it it’s gonna turn around and kick ya’ in the rear end. It always does. Everything always turns around later on and kicks you right in the rear.
But the chemicals are there because the old chemicals we had they were a lot a lot more toxic. And like we’ll get back on the smaller farmer you just it’s just like when you go to sell grain anymore you gotta sell it where you can get the price. It isn’t where the best price is at.
It’s just control again. But the chemicals are so changed that you they’re they’re spendin’ billions of dollars just to have on like a two chemicals you know well this is the only thing that’ll work so you put that on. And it’s for the big farmers.
And when you put that stuff on it pollutes bigger areas now see if you wasn’t or if you had smaller farmers you be raisin a little bit of chicken little bit of hogs and you’d have hay ground seed down. When ah they went to the big farmers that took away all your conservation and what I mean by conservation you don’t have hay ground and pasture.
It’s all row crop so therefore you’re chemicals so therefore you got more chemicals over a bigger area that pollutes the ground worse. It’s just like a big hog confinement or the corporate hog confinements. It’s all in one little area, but they gotta’ spread the…well I call it shit or manure.
They call it ah what do they call it vitamins or whatever it is. Nutrients! That’s what it is I never heard of it till’ this year they’re comin’ up with somethin’ all the time. To make it sound so it don’t smell you know but ah that’s in a bigger concentrated area you know and you pollute the ground with all that hog manure and everything you know it’s just the same way with chemicals.
So when you take away when they took away the cattle market from us farmers to get along, but wanna’ break ya’ see? That’s free market. That’s your board of trade. You get along they don’t want ya’ to break even they want you to be below even you know twenty percent on your profit you know you can’t do that.
But it all reverts back to big farmers and big money you know I mean ah why can’t you just say well at least I made out through all my losses and everything. I still made they ought to pay you by the hour, which I think that’s what they’re workin’ up to their [unintelligible] their gonna pay ya’ by the hour instead of you havin’ your own.
Well like the hog confinements that’s just that’s just ah what I call a manager. You know it’s just a house cleaner. He’s not really, he don’t handle the money or anything he’s just the caretaker. And that’s what all of them are they’re tryin’ to find more caretakers all the time.
What have you noticed about the bees?
Well I’ve noticed for the last three years there’s not any bumblebees around. They’re pollinators for ah clover or anything nectar ah I don’t see any honey bees around, there used to be honeybees around. Ah don’t see any sweat bees and their kind of a little small item of a honeybee and their nectar.
Lot’s of nectar bees and bugs that I don’t see around anymore and it’s getting’ less and less every year. So I don’t know if it’s the BT in the corn, or what’s killin’ off our nectars you know. So we’re gonna’ be in trouble with that. We already are out in [inaudible] fields and stuff we’re already in trouble with the bees and their [inaudible] but I don’t know what it’s comin’ to.
I mean I don’t know what and they won’t say to but I notice the more we put more genetics into these crops we’re gettin’ less of our other ecosystems and we are losin’ an ecosystem here our. What are we going to do about that? Are we gonna go another twenty years and be wiped out on a species or. You know we always wait till twenty or thirty years later and they shouldn’t have done this and they shouldn’t have done that you know.
It’s like I was tellin’ you about ah the monarch. There’s no monarchs around here in Iowa unless it’s unless it’s a government piece of ground and they’ve got plenty of ah milkweed grown because the monarch lays it’s eggs on a milkweed. That’s their home and they eat off the milkweed and then the little ones are born.
But when we come out with Round-Up we don’t have no milkweed no more. There just ain’t any milkweeds around and that took their home. And we don’t have monarchs around here anymore or a bunch of little other pretty little butterflies and I don’t know I just think it needs looked into.
To check and see what this is gonna mess up our ecosystem cause ah what goes around comes around. You ever heard a little something like that? It’s a good old saying. What goes around comes around. But ah it kinda. The BT is nice your corn doesn’t fall down and the ears don’t drop on the ground cause you can’t pick em’ up off the ground with the big machines we got. Stand straight so therefore you would have a better yield.
But are we headed for somethin’ that we don’t really that we don’t know about? Or we aren’t gonna.’ We’re gonna be in a lot of trouble is what I’m sayin.’ I think big money is comin’ in there again. Their just. It’s for money. But it does it does yield better cause it’s standin’ up nice and nice as tall fall and the wind won’t blow it down.
But a sacrifice ya’ fat, sacrifice one thing for another you know and I remember havin’ you go down by here in ah oh the last of August on these roads and you’d just be peppered with corn bullets buds just thick thick. Oh I wanted to mention another thing when you had corn [unintelligible] you had plenty of swallows and a lot of ah sparrows. We ain’t got very many of them around here either specially the sparrows I suppose because the food chain see they left. There isn’t hardly any bugs in this corn so the birds are gone. So.
I just wanted to say I it kind of bothers me a little bit of what we’re getting’ into here. But it is nice you know how good your corn stands. But I’m interested in. And if ah if a plant can do that to a little bug, little corn bullet bug and ah it goes through the whole stock and the kernels. It’s gotta go into the kernels too, that we eat, and it kills the bug now what is that doin’? Does that mean anything to anybody?
If it kills the bug, what is that doin’ to us? It just makes ya’ wonder and I think it needs kind of. We outta really be lookin’ into it. Before we get in real good trouble and I think we’re getting’ past that. Gotta start turnin’ around or we’re really gonna be in [unintelligible] cause South America is doin’ the same thing and their just ruinin’ it down there. So that’s about what I can say.
If you didn’t get a subsidy, would you be in the black with these prices?
Well, comparing me to the big corporate farmers around here, a lot of them is handed down money.
Well, when they’re putting it in other people’s names, kids’ names and all of that. They’re starting to crack down on that, but you’ve got a $250,000 limitation, see? And I never knew it went up to 250, for a long time, because I think the most I ever got was $25, $30,000.
You’re talking some of my big 20-mile-away corporate that come down here, they’re getting $2 and $3 million, in other people’s names.
When you say corporate, you’re talking about a family that’s made it into a corporation?
Like, the Farm Bureau says it’s family farms? How do you compare, well, [Katings] and stuff over there that’s, all of them have inherited millions of dollars. They’re taking their subsidy money and turning it around and buying all the cheap ground around here, with the subsidies. $2 million a year, you can buy a lot of cheap land.
You said that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that was the good times for you.
A Mustang back in ’65 was $2,300. You bought the same car today, it’s probably about $40,000, at least. $60,000. $2,300 for the car, you’d get it like that . . . A Mustang.
Was downtown Dexter looking a lot different?
Yep. Well, more populated, see. You figure back then, we was the Baby Boomers, and you figured that they all had between four, five, up to ten kids apiece. There’s lots of kids around. You knew everybody. You had lots of fun. Go to town in Dexter on Saturday night, Dexter on Saturday night . . . Do the loop.
You’d go up there on Saturday night, you’d think it was a mall. All of them. You had your work force. See, there’s a whole lot of factors that come in to ruin [that]. Insurance, you know, insurance, you’ve got to work [through] your insurance.
It’s turned out to be for the worse, [starting] [time], [it's going to get] your health. There are small towns now that are just a bedroom town, where they [work] [anymore]. A lot of them. It was not your manufacturers, you don’t have a small town [unintelligible].
See, there was two grocery stores when I was growing up. A hardware store. Two hardware stores. Two [Codey’s] stores. You had the malt shop for the south, or your north. And on Main Street, you had another malt shop that was going, like you see, the malt shops back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. [Stern] had that many. Of course, Stern’s twice as big. You had twice as many stations.
Yeah, it was better. I mean, we got a lot of manual work, but everybody was working, and anybody had – [James] [unintelligible] talking, and money was worth money, see? You have money in your pocket, today, and it don’t buy nothing.
Well, yeah, there used to be – we had a skating rink in Stewart, a big old skating rink in Stewart. That’s where you went on a Saturday night. [unintelligible] week. You had a . . . a movie house up on Main Street. And all the kids – and then [Pinore], which is north of Stewart, you know, in the summertime you could go up there and watch – they had the outdoor shows, a movie screen out there, a drive-in movie.
Oh, yeah, there was a lot – there was a three times – it’s so dead today.
Why would a young person want to stick around when you’ve got a town that’s half-dead like that?
Well, that’s why you don’t have families. See, when you – the trouble with people today – and this is part of our government’s fault – families aren’t families when they’re all spread across the United States. Why raise a family if you aren’t going to keep your family together? There’s no sense in having your family if they’re going to be in New York or California.
Don’t have any kids, then. Because family’s your closest people to – your best friends you’re ever going to have. And that ain’t the way it’s working. And I’ll say it again, and I don’t care who likes it or not. If you can’t keep your family and keep it within – even Des Moines is too far, 40 to 30 miles is too far for your family to be away. Because you can’t watch your grandchildren grow up. All my-my grandparents lived close enough that we could just walk to their place, another mile, see?
And my – and all her kids pretty well stayed there, but her other kids – two of them moved down – one to Arizona, one to [Fordham]. My grandma never even hardly knew them grandkids, and they never hardly knew my grandmother.
Do you ever get to see your grandkid?
Very seldom, because there’s always something for the city life, you’ve got to go, go, go. And I’m too busy. But if she was down a mile away, I’d stop by every day.
Well, then why would the government be promoting a farm policy that makes it tough for family to even exist?
I don’t know. You’re getting into something that I haven’t been able to figure out for 59 years. And it don’t get any better, it just gets worse. They say it’s better for you, and it gets worse. Every ten years, it just gets worse, you know, the policies and everything. Instead of everybody going to Des Moines and burning all this fuel, why ain’t the government saying, well, we’ll give you – if that’s what they want – they’ve always got to look for a tax break, a tax break, a tax break. Why don’t that government say, the only way you can do it is, you’ve got to – don’t build a great big factory, let’s build ten little ones?
And then they’ll tell me that management’s bad that way. That’s bullshit . . . That is the biggest bullshit I ever heard in my life. It’s because they’re getting tax write-offs if they build it in Des Moines. But, you can come out here and-to a little town, and they want another tax write-off, and then people out in the little towns can’t afford that. But, that’s where all – instead of having a gigantic – one, you should have several, spread across this United States. Everybody’d be happy.
And they say that that’s not good management. That’s bullshit.
What keeps you going?
When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to go with my dad – I suppose it’s the mechanic’s part of it, making things work, and watching it grow. Like I said, I rode with him when I was three years old, running a tractor, essentially, growing, combines. And I don’t know, being’s I went through the Reagan era and everything. It’s just kind of whittled me down.
What’s changed?
I said in that, let’s see, when was that – it was back in the ‘80s. ’86, I think, when they was doing the documentary. And I told them back then, that in 20 more years it’ll be pretty well all corporate. And I was right. I can’t compete with corporate. See, that works on your body and your mind, when you’ve got to work against corporations. It just wears you out to a thin thread, you know? Because you just pound, and pound, and pound . . .
And that’s the main reason why we’re getting [unintelligible] . . . I’m tired, and I’m going to start cutting back. Otherwise, you know, if you – I got a neighbor kid over here, I was going to start giving him land, you know, and he don’t really want it. Some of my rented ground. I was going to cut back. He says he can make more guaranteed money trucking livestock, fat cattle, going down to Oklahoma, [Hellespont], out in Nebraska, and trucks and all. He can make more money [driving] [and assembling] the livestock.
It’s guaranteed, see. I mean, the money’s right in front of you when you get done, usually that day. And farming, just row cropping, it’s just once a year, really. It’s too risky. He knows what he can make with that truck, but he’s got to get out there and drive it. That’s the difference. And-and he ain’t got – he ain’t got a quarter of a million dollars in machinery to worry about. Just drive that truck, you know, and make a pretty good living.
He figures, even if he’s part-time, he’ll make – I think just part-time he makes about $60,000, $70,000 with it. And he farms, too, and he’s got – sprays ground. He’s got all different kinds of income coming in, different income, you’ve about got to do that. But you’ve got to also be young, to work night and day.
But, it’s working for him, but he don’t want to [do] it on farming more ground. See, you’ve got too much – your overhead’s too high.
Could you and Barb make it without whatever size subsidy check you get?
Oh, yeah, I can now that I got out of debt. I could probably do without it. See, we’re getting back to that subsidy, again, is everybody – I tell them, and they agree with me – is that subsidy, all it does is, it trans – it goes out of your hand and goes back into the landlord’s. You don’t see it. They just keep raising your cash rent. And then, I was telling you about, now that there’s $4 corn and $9 beans, well, they’ll jump anywhere from $20 to $40 in one year on that piece of ground.
Well, you’re only going to see that this fall, but next year, that’s when it’s going to hit you, when you pay that first cash rent. You lost all that. It’s a wash, that’s what I said.
If you farm your own ground today, it still costs you about $300 an acre. Your own ground, if it’s paid for. It’s $300. That ain’t [cow] cash. So, that’s – it’s just getting too prohibitively – and that’s because they’re hooking us on this genetic stuff.
I think when I first started farming, me and Barb, I think I bought some corn for $20 a barrel, you know? I think the corn back then made $120 [for an installment]. You know, for trying to [use] then . . . And now we’re talking as high as $215, $215 a barrel . . . So-but, back then, you remember, we were raising more cows and more hogs, and the chickens, and fertilizer wasn’t [all that]. And the seed wasn’t [all that]. You just got along, because you had different incomes. But if you’re row croppers – and even the big corporate guys, they’ve got a lot of overhead on them.
It’s just costing too much. And you can’t ever catch up.
How’s this crop growing for you?
Pretty good. It’s, uh, probably my second best — best crop. Got the rains about the right time we needed them, [unintelligible] usually get dry [unintelligible] running into. This field will probably average 60 bushels. So, it’s doing pretty good. Learning how to run this machine is two different things.
How’d your dad farm without one of these machines?
Well, because they started making these machines like these, you know, they made them better and better every year, but he used to be out in the open, I don’t know if you see how dirty it is outside of here, he used to be out I the open on a tractor and did two rows at a time, this one takes 12. He combined all day long [unintelligible], maybe 500 bushels, these two together, within an hour you’ll have a 1,000.
That’s the difference in the machines. I grew up with [unintelligible] machines, the two row. That’s how I started [unintelligible], combine out in the open. Then he started getting self-propelled, and the self-propelled like this [unintelligible] whole different machine back then. It was — but they didn’t have no cab or nothing on them, so you was in the filthy dirt, gnats, stuff all over your face, just — just couldn’t breathe because of the dust and everything.
And I think that’s part of the problem, why everybody my dad’s age was dying, because [unintelligible], called Farmers [unintelligible]. [Unintelligible] the dust on this, [unintelligible] confinement, you got cancer. Cancer of the lung, cancer of the liver, all that dust [unintelligible].
Back then they didn’t really know — they knew what chemicals, uh, we didn’t have any grass [unintelligible] or [unintelligible] for the beans, because we had [unintelligible] corn was [unintelligible]. What it is, is about the same thing as they use in Agent Orange, today, you know, for [unintelligible] and stuff, [unintelligible] and stuff, it was a lot stronger back then than it is now.
And so, I imagine the chemicals — they said my dad, uh, died it was environmental, from chemicals and stuff. All in general, you just can’t put it on one specific thing because you had chemicals, [unintelligible] dust, corn dust, bean dust, you had [unintelligible] one year, it’s like beans, just as dirty as beans. They got pulled in the bin, [unintelligible] out the bin, and that mold stuff got in his lungs and, oh, I’d say he was probably about 35, and, uh, that mold spores got in his lungs from that [unintelligible] mold.
He was in the hospital for almost a month with a collapsed lung because of the dust and everything. So, I’d imagine it was probably coming through all the years, you know, from that first time that he got in the [unintelligible] cancer from all the chemicals and stuff.
How do you watch what happens for yourself?
Wear masks, the combines are better now, you know, keep the dust out. We’ve got more filters in this cab to keep the dust out. Wear a mask, like now they’ve got big vacuum [unintelligible] goes in there. Bins now that’ll suck the beans and the corn out and they’ll be no dust, you see. But, that’s what killed him, was the dust, all the [unintelligible].
Mostly the [unintelligible] in his later years, because there’s mites in them, people don’t know that there’s mites in the skin of the hog and they’ll get in your lungs, too. The scales [unintelligible] bodies will get in there, uh, it’s like, our skin flushes off — fluffs off and the hogs do too, they’re kind of close to a human being, and they fluff off their skin.
Well that’s all in that hog confinement when you’re breathing all that in there. They’ve got mites and stuff in them and you’re breathing all that all the time, and it’s got gasses, like the sulfates, in it — in the building all the time. You can ventilate them all you want, but it’s still got hydrosulfates, it don’t make no difference. If you could cap that pit off with a dome, separate it from the — the hogs some way — see that’s why [unintelligible], then you can go over and cap that off and then you got all that manure gasses in there, you can burn that off.
The big boys seem to be winning?
Yeah. It don’t make no difference what you do, it’s all money. They all, uh, have a tendency to go on the money side and they don’t care about anybody else. The thing is that I don’t like about corporate hog confinements is because they aren’t owned by us, we wouldn’t have that — we wouldn’t raise that many anyway. [Unintelligible], my neighbors, don’t raise hogs anymore, it’s all bumper crops –
The corporate hog confinements are not owned by us small farmers — smaller farmers, hardly any even bigger farmers. They’re growing meat to go overseas, they ain’t growing it for the people in the United States, it’s all [unintelligible] overseas. Or you — otherwise you wouldn’t have [unintelligible] farmers. They’re filthy anyway.
But, uh, most of them guys, like I said, they’re corporate, it’s all corporate, and they got it figured out to where they can buy the feed meal cheap, big corn cheap, most of the time [unintelligible] we’ll bust our butts off out here and just raise –
How do you compete with the big corporate farms that are raising corn and soy?
Well, [unintelligible]. My age group might, a lot can happen in 10 years. [unintelligible] 20 years ago [unintelligible], all the big corporate farmers is going to take over the smaller guys like me, I was farming 3,000 acres and I just couldn’t [unintelligible] all the help, driving me nuts, and, uh, breaking down all my tracks.
It was kind of a [unintelligible] situation. So, I cut back to 1500 and I seem [unintelligible] and I’ve still got my friends coming out and helping me after work and stuff. I seem to get along a lot better that way then [unintelligible] being big.
How much longer do you think you’re going to be farming?
Well, there was so many years through the [unintelligible], that I just, this year, tore up a note — what is this, I want to say, seven — seven, or, uh, 19 — what was it, ’86 on, you figure out the years, how many, that’s quite a few years to get that [unintelligible] note paid off. That ain’t good.
A lot of farmers didn’t like Ronald Reagan, because his specific words were he was going to fight for all the farmers he can. He had that [unintelligible] program at first, but he got mad [unintelligible] and he, uh, — they didn’t — he broke a lot of farmers. I don’t know what he was mad about, but he was down here in [unintelligible] one day, made a big announcement here, he was going to break the farmers and — as many farmers as he can.
He did. He broke them all. He broke my brother, he broke my neighbor, he done a lot of breaking of a lot of young farmers that should’ve stayed here, now they’re all moved to California, New York, different states.
Now when he broke them, who took over the farm?
I had to borrow more money and buy out my brother’s — we owned equipment half together and I had to buy — borrow the money and buy out his equipment — half of his equipment. And — which that had set me back for over 20 years; I’ve been hammering away at this for 20 years to get things paid off and everything. And if it wasn’t for Ronald Reagan my brother wouldn’t have gone, and I wouldn’t have had to go that much further into debt to keep the machinery. Because they were going to come out and, uh, lock, stock and barrel, sell it all, put it on a sale.
And the thing is, there ain’t no — I suppose I could’ve quit and helped my dad, but me and him kind of worked together anyway, because he had his own farm. I suppose he was too proud back then to do that, you know? Sell out in front of your dad. My dad pretty well had things [unintelligible], but he was in debt, too. Reagan — Reagan about broke him, too. He ruined a lot of people and there wasn’t no sense in it. There wasn’t no sense in it at all.
You’re fighting — not fight the [unintelligible], [unintelligible] all the time, rural commodities [unintelligible]. Then you have a president who says he’ s going to break you.
Why don’t you follow suit with what the Rosmanns are doing and just go organic?
Well, if you’re — if you’re farming 500 acres, the organic farmers just right, you know? But, uh, if you’re farming 1500 or more, you know, or — or above 500, you about got to use the chemicals, because you haven’t got time to go out — you’d have to cultivate everything at least three times. Cultivate is where it tears up the ground and throws it up around the beans or the corn, and you got to separate it from other — it’s — it’s strictly organic, and you’ve got to separate it from any of your other crops if you’ve got it, you can’t combine the two because if they catch it — because you’re registered for that.
And that’s a good deal, you know, to keep the two, uh, situated apart, but, uh, my reason is I just ain’t got time, I’m alone with myself, I ain’t got time to cultivate all that, so you use — you use chemicals. And the — it — if you can organic farm, the power to him, because when I grew up it was organic anyway, I mean we never had chemicals when I was just a kid.
So, it isn’t much difference, but I remember getting out on the cultivator and going all the time, all summer long, cultivating until you just break everything over, bust the corn over and everything to keep it clean. And it wasn’t very clean. You had weeds and everything, you know, now you’d have to keep the weeds down because — and they — they earn their money when they organic farm.
Oh, yeah, you earn your money on it, and then a lot — they had an organic, uh, elevator up here at Stewart, and it only lasted about three or four years, but they hauled in from all over the state, but a lot of it — a lot of the truckers have to go by, uh, weight and it’s higher on wait instead of so many cents a bushel to haul it in there, because it’s got a lot of weed seed in it and stuff.
So, there’s, uh, quite a bit of difference. I don’t know what you’re — you’re pounds would be different, because of your weed seed, and they dock you off that — every time they find weed seed or, you know, that’s foreign material and everything, so you’ve got about — really, if you do that, you’ve got to clean everything, really, before you take it to the organic place. You ought to have a screener and stuff and do it. And it all takes time, you know, lots of time and everything. But, uh, if I could, I’d rather go to organic farming, save you a lot of money, you know, on –
All the water’s going south and they have to put rural water out here and the water’s getting so bad. If you have to use chemicals if you’re going to be big, is the answer to go small?
Well, if you quit using chemicals, we still got a period of years there that it’s going to take a long time for it to get out of the ground water, because it’s so saturated with chemicals. I think [unintelligible], supposedly, from Monsano [phonetic] is supposedly to be — it’s non-toxic at all to the ground anymore, you know? But, how do we really know that? I don’t know if it is or not, that’s what they say.
Atrozine was a cheap chemical back in, about 30 years ago when it first come out and they poured it on, like five pounds to the acre, because it was hard to kill grass. And it killed grass and it killed button weeds and because it was so cheap, but around here, we got a clay base in our ground, which holds the atrozine for years.
Up northern Iowa, it’s got a sand base so far down in the ground, and it goes clear down through, so they didn’t have near the problems. Where we got a build up in this and every year we rotated to beans, our beans would only get about six inches off the ground and then they would turn brown real early and they were dead. It’s a broad leaf killer, see? But we — but they used it on corn, corn, corn, you know, all the time, and it’s just in the ground, it stays there. You can find traces of it to this day, you know, it ant — atrozine is not good, you know, I don’t know if they ought to even be making it anymore.
They no longer call it atrozine, but apparently it’s part of the mixture in a lot of the weed killers used.
Right, because that’s what I usually ask when I do my corn one year, to see how much atrozines on for stunt your beans the next year, see? But you putting on, oh we’re only putting on, like, maybe a pound to the acre now, just to kind of keep the weeds down a little bit, you know?
But, uh, so far it’s the only thing that really works and that’s why we use it, you know? I’m not saying it’s right. I haven’t used it for a long time, a long time. It got so bad in my ground it took about five, six years quit using it because it was stunting my beans.
If you have to use this stuff if you’re big, then what’s the future? How is Des Moines waterworks ever going to have water that people can drink out of the tap and not be worried about it?
I don’t know. I really don’t know. How do we know, you know? Because you’re only allowed so many millions of trace of it in there anyway, you know. I don’t — I know one thing, it’s going to take a period of years — lot of years to clean it up, but they need more, uh, the CRP, they need more of it along any creeks and along rivers and everything, that seems to help.
It really does, it filters it out, they’ve got it up here on the Coon River, a couple Coon Rivers, and they’re, uh, got them filter strips in and it’s starting to help clean up the waterways and stuff, and lakes and stuff. But –
This new Farm Bill isn’t out yet, but the House version has just still a tiny trickle of money for the conservation end of things. Would that be helpful to you?
Yeah, you do and then Iowa’s got a little better conservation, you know, in Iowa for your streams and waterways, and there’s quite a few people does, they put in an 80 foot strip on both sides of the streams and that helps. But the federal government needs to come in a lot better on that, a lot stronger on that.
You — you can go across the country and see that these big farmers are just eroding the hell out of all the ground, you know, and the wash stuff, and by rights they’re not — they’re supposed to do their conservation plan right. They’ve tore waterways out, and that’s where you come in between the two valleys, like out here in this field, they’re supposed to be a waterway, no there’s a big ditch coming down, and they bounce through them and everything. The big boys, they don’t seem to bother with messing with them, but me, they would and my neighbors over here, they would, but the big — big 5,000-acre guys and above, they don’t even mess with them.
Do you feel like you’re represented as a family farmer in Des Moines and Washington D.C.?
No, no I definitely don’t feel that I’m represented. Because when you can stand by and watch your neighbor, the big boys come in, especially my own ground that I farmed, I sold a farm, and my mom sold her farm, and there’s — on a section, she had there was 30 acres of waterways. Now, it’s probably down to about 10, they just keep tearing out the waterways and tearing out the waterways all the time.
And you’ve got the ASC down here, your local deal, they won’t even — they’ll come around and spot check my ground, make sure I’m doing it right, but they won’t even look at them guys. And I — no, Democracy’s not working, definitely not, on my part it isn’t. And them people give a bad name for people like us that’s doing it good. They’re — they’re — because you notice a big farmer, and a big field, is not doing a very good job, they ain’t noticing the smaller guy. I do, I can notice who’s doing — doing right and who ain’t. And a lot of other people can too, even the farm neighbors can.
The big boys, they come 30 miles away just to farm and tear up area, [unintelligible] remember. They’re only there twice a year, and that’s all they’re there. They tear our roads up, our bridges up, they don’t care. Now if there was a way we could all group while we were here and go over to like Camby, Iowa, and tear their bridges up and their roads up, they wouldn’t like it either. But, it — that’s what it’s doing, we’re getting all , what we call them is foreigners, coming in within — anywhere from 15 to 30 miles, they’re coming in and tearing our ground up and our roads up, they don’t care.
It’s a family corporate, you know, it’s corporate, but it’s corporate, you know. It’s not, [unintelligible], or Jim, you know, or your brother, Dennis, or whatever it is, you know, it’s not individual, it’s a corporate. Go check them out, if you want to check them out, it ain’t in their names, it’s all corporate. But it’s family, but in a lot of places you have big ones that ain’t, you know, got 15, 20 guys working for them, because they’re farming 10,000 acres, you know? So, that corporate bit can go a long way on either family or whatever.
Between like my fifteen hundred that’s kinda scaling down now. There’s a lot of guys that are happy at eight hundred you know, which I’d like to be. But fifteen hundred and uh, we’re talkin like seventy — my share of the raisin corn a year is probably seventy thousand, maybe eighty thousand bushel.
Well, in that year’s time, you wanna remember them guys, they take all theirs — they — they hurry as fast as they can so they can get uptown to put it into the elevator and us guys, we can’t do that. ‘Cause they got them great big combines, they got two and three like this one, and they hurry as fast as they can ’cause they know there’s other big farmers.
And they hurry as fast as they can and they fill up the elevators. So, the small guy waits. Which is not right, you know, cause, especially when I get back to the fifteen and thirty mile guys, away from here. We’re the ones that built these elevators in the country the smaller guys. Years ago. Now, these big boys come in and are pushing us out of our elevators now. And we can’t take our — our beans and corn into town ’cause they’re full. And you gotta wait and wait and wait.
There’s nothing fair about that. That ain’t democracy in this country. The big get bigger and push the smaller out, and that’s the same way. But these guys never helped build these elevators and keep the small town elevators going. They’re slagging — what they’re gonna do is push out the other people that are here and that’s not right. And — and — and — it’s the same from the marketing part of it. They’ll go up there and got all their corn in storage and they’ll dump that. Forty thousand bushel in one day.
Well, see, in one day, that’s half my crop on corn, for the whole year. And I can’t mark — and that’s why the markets go down is because you got all them big corporate farmers that are dumping that corn all at once. And that’s why I don’t like big — uh, big corporate farmers.
Is it true that farmers need subsidies because of subsidies?
Yes they do. But, it depends on which farmer you’re talkin about. It’s mainly for the big farmers. The li — the smaller you are, you aren’t gonna get much subsidy, because we go by so much a bushel, you know, and most the people who are farming two or three hundred acres, they’re working anyway, you know, so you’re not really gonna hurt them, you know.
But. Let’s be fair about it. And we’re not fair at all about this subsidy payment stuff. I was going along here well, about ten years ago I always thought it was a fifty thousand dollar limitation. That’s fine. I never got that anyway. And then they added in ah your LDPs, for so many cents a bushel for your corn and beans. Well that went way out with the big guys, see.
And I think their limitation was four hundred thousand, you know, on the subsidy — on the LDP part. That’s got so much extra — fifteen, twenty cents for your grain, you know. Then it went up to four hundred thousand, which shocked me, I never paid any attention. I never got even close to that, why would ya pay any attention to it? But these guys are getting all that, and then they’ll put it in somebody else’s name, their son’s name, or their cousin’s name, or their mom and dad’s name or anything. I don’t know how you’re gonna fix that! It needs to be fixed, you know.
Mine’s — I can get along without the subsidy, you know, but the only way you can qualify for all of this through the ASC, is you — you can’t take federal crop. You can’t — ain’t got federal crop insurance. So, see, it’s a — it’s a forced thing. There’s nothing free about anything, and if you’re gonna use the government’s money, you gotta do what they say. It’s — there’s nothing free.
If you were twenty-nine years old, would you opt to go organic and smaller scale?
If it had been in that time, and kept that way, yeah probably. Cause you work anyway, you know, hours is hours, no matter what you do, you figure out a way to make it work. Yeah, probably. I know a lot of other people probably woulda too. But as the times roll, you know, you move with the times, and everything. Well, now you’re so caught up in it now, you gotta use chemicals see. And it’d be hard to downsize, you know.
Cause it — when I grew up that’s all we had, we was doing it. Boy we had some weedy beans; I mean to tell you, it was terrible! I mean it was — you’d plug up all the time. And frankly I asked my dad I don’t know why he was even farming if he had to get out there and unplug the cylinder, and they was some old dirty things, you know, and everything. I don’t — I don’t know why anybody wanted to raise any food for anybody. Cause it was terrible! That’s just the difference between your chemicals and your organic. You gotta have all your ducks in a row when you do it organic.
I think if we — through the times — because see we was doing that anyway. But through the times we woulda eventually made equipment better and everything. I’m saying starting back thirty years ago. To make the organic easier, you know, and figured out ways and everything, but the chemicals come in and made it so much easier that we — it’s just like filling up your car with gas.
You stop, and you spray it and it’s just that uh — but I think if they — they woulda worked on the organic way back then, we’d have it all a lot better than it is. With different equipment and stuff, you know. But you gotta be equipped to raise that organic stuff. You know, I mean, you gotta — it’s a lot of manual hours. And that’s why you don’t go organic!
What if they would put the research into the technology side of things?
Into the organic I think we would — you’d probably see a lot more maybe in the future. And you don’t have to farm as big see. You know, to keep up with the — the overhead and everything. Just put more into the iron. We call it iron. And yeah, everything’d probably be better, even cleaner water and everything else.
But I think we’re beyond that with these big boys. They ain’t gonna do that. You ain’t gonna see [unintelligible]. Because some of them, most of them my age, they remember when they — when we was doing cultivating night and day, you know, going all the time and everything, cause you do have a lot more labor intensity. And that’s why they should be paying more for the clean beans and the — you know, the no chemical free. You know its all chemical free.
Why aren’t the Ag committees making some money available to get this machinery so it could deal with weeds and organics?
I don’t know if anybody — they could get enough people interested, you know. Which there’s a lot of it out here to get interested, but yeah, they’ve gotta do something to kinda help them out, you know. You just can’t take and turn and say I’m gonna go to organic next year. You ain’t geared for it. And there you go again, gotta buy all these cultivators, and this new equipment you know, and stuff, and there you go in debt again, you know. And you just ain’t geared for it. It takes lots — it takes a period of years to get geared for that.
Like I said, if we’d a kept it back in the thirty — thirty years ago, you know, during the sixties, we’d a worked up — and we’d a had all this, probably the technology part for organic. But we didn’t do that. It was too cheap, and too easy to use chemicals. Cause I can remember when we was kids, we walked beans and weed — you cut weeds, and you’d cut them big old cockleburs they got in there, and you cut the button weeds, and you ain’t gonna get anybody to do that no more!
And that’s just the way it is, Steve, it just — it — it’s just — we just ain’t geared for it now. It’s just so much easier to put the chemicals on, and the fields are clean. ‘Cause I can remember as a kid they were pretty dirty.
Well, I noticed that — being as here’s — we don’t know what’s all in these chemicals I noticed that over the years, that I don’t see any sparrows or anything flying around do you guys? No, I mean we used to have sparrows flying around and out and getting the insects and everything you know.
I don’t — I just notice everything’s deteriorating more and more every ten years. We haven’t got near the birds we used to have. And they eat bugs. And if you’re gonna organic farm, you need them birds! That’s mainly what I’ve been a noticing over my lifetime is less and less birds being around.
In the roads you used to hit sparrows all the time with a car, with a pickup. That’s very uncommon anymore. You don’t hit a bird no more.
What are we gonna do without the birds and the bees?
Well, we’re already in trouble about the bees. ‘Cause they do a lot of breeding and everything you know. I mean, we gotta have the bees. And then you gotta have the birds too. Or either we’re gonna get rid of all the insects. If we’re getting rid of all the insects what’s that mean? You know you gotta have some insects. There is where there’s a lotta farmers don’t like ’em and there are some good. And organic farming you should have it. You gotta have — you gotta have the bees and the birds. Especially organic farming gotta have a lot of birds. But there ain’t none around. I’ve — I see less and less every year. Every ten years it gets worse. So, I don’t know what’s in the chemicals or something.
Yeah, milkweed or dogbane, when they first started coming out with Round-Up, it just wiped all that out. You might see a little bit in the ditches, you know, milkweed, but that’s where they lay their eggs, and uh feed off that milkweed. The monarchs did. And you don’t see them any more around here, either. Quite a few butterflies you don’t see no more.
So, I’ll just leave it up to the people and they can decide what they wanna do, cause we’re trying! There just ain’t enough people to raise enough hell you know, about these chemicals. You know. A lot of other farmers notice that there isn’t any birds or insects around. It’s just you’re gonna go from one generation to the next generation if you don’t get kinda control of it now, what’s it gonna be like in another thirty years?
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