Paul Buxman

How long has this farm been in your family?

It’s four generations here, so it’s been farmed by either relatives or my dad or myself or my son for the past 50, 60 years. Which isn’t really that long, when you consider, but there are very few four-generation farms around anymore. So, yeah, we’ve probably been on this one piece of dirt and making improvements since then.

Why are you a farmer?

I didn’t mean to be, and I grew up to be a painter, but I discovered in a hurry that if you have to paint what you sell, then you’re going to generally pain the things you don’t really love. So, I decided I’d farm, and then I’d have time to paint. I didn’t realize that it was going to be a full-time occupation. I should have known better.

But I have fallen in love with making improvements on the land, and bringing wonderful, sweet fruits to people, and watching them light up. I think sometimes we provide the one bright spot in most people’s lives. They can work hard, a lousy day at the office, and come home and have a piece of peach pie. That’s a pretty important role that we play.

What changes have you seen on the farm?

We’ve all kind of figured out what grows best here. And when dad was farming this, there was really mostly open ground, everywhere. And then we started with grapes, and everybody made raisins, and then the price fell out. So, then everybody went to tree fruit, because they could make more money. And now, people are starting to think, maybe we’d better start diversifying again.

So, it’s coming back around, and I would say that rather than it being in a linear change, it’s sort of circling back to where we need to have more diversity. And it started out, everybody had their own farm, everybody packed their own, shipped it. It used to say on the boxes, grower, packer, shipper, that was a big thing.

Well, it got to be everybody sort of had division of labor. Now, we’re coming back to, grower, packer, shipper, lots of diversification, lots of eggs in different baskets. That’s where we are today.

How about in terms of inputs being used?

Sure. I went away to college, and when I came back and was going to help on the farm, things has really changed in the ’60s. The ’50s and ’60s is when we sort of had a chemical revolution, and boy, did it make life easy. I mean, we weren’t out hoeing, there was a chemical for everything.

But of course, the down side of that was, that they had a short life span. They generally upset the ecology, when you sprayed for one bug, you suddenly had five that you never knew you had before. So, what’s happened, we’ve sort of decided that there was something to Dad’s way of farming. And he would often say — he had this wonderful line — let’s see, do I pray or do I spray?

And he sort of chose the pray method. And of course, it wasn’t that we were trying to get the divine powers to protect the farm, it was more that the divine power was already in place. Ecology has been here as long as evolution. So, yeah, we are definitely returning, it’s not exactly a simpler way of farming, but it is certainly a more natural way.

What’s different about the way you farm to some of your neighbors, the way they farm?

Well, I think that everybody is on the same path. But we’re at different places along the road. I watched my neighbor farm, and his car would go by, and it was so low in the back. And I remember asking him, as he stopped, I said, what do you got in that truck? It’s so loaded? [Omite]. And I said, Omite, that’s to kill mites, the little spiders that suck the sap out of leaves, and I said, but the mites haven’t even started yet.

Yeah, I know, but I like to get a jump on them. I kill them before they get here. And I said, you know, I mean, I’m not going to argue the reasoning, but that was the thought, was that if we get in there fast enough with a chemical. But those neighbors are really changing. One day, a neighbor came to me and was fanning himself with his bills. And he said, look at this, look at this, I can’t afford this. Can you help me out? I got to cut back.

That was a wonderful day for me. I got a chance to ride in his new pickup and look at all of his farms, and tell him how to reduce rates, but the object was not pest control, the object was a stable ecology. Where the good bugs, uh, will always be slightly ahead of the bad ones. There will be these out-of-sync times in that balance. But that’s the goal. Before, the goal was, kill that bug! But that’s a short-term goal.

So, I would say that the farmer’s around me have begun to look toward a longer-range goal of a balanced ecology. That was not even heard of 15 years ago. Now, we talk about, well, if I spray, is that going to hurt my beneficial? No one even knew what a beneficial was 15 years ago. Now, we know.

You said you used to use pesticides, but you decided to stop?

I had learned how to use these chemicals from my dad when I got back from college. It seemed like the way to go. It was the modern way to farm. But when my son got sick and when we began to check around, it seemed that the water that we were using was filled with this pesticide. It wasn’t one that we were using, but it was one that many of the surrounding farms were using. A very effective pesticide, by the way, but it had a downside, and that was that it caused cancer.

And we decided to put the chemicals in my pickup and I wanted to take them back to the seller, but they wouldn’t take them back. So, I gave it to my neighbors — maybe not a good idea, but I didn’t know what to do with it. So, at that point we sort of went cold turkey, and things worked out. We developed kind of a new way of farming, I think, at least for us, and I think it was very helpful to a lot of other growers.

Could you speak to, what was it like when you realized that this wasn’t anemia, but a precursor for leukemia?

I felt as devastated as any parent, who just doesn’t anticipate these kind of life-threatening diseases. And right away you sort of want to circle the wagons. What do we do to stop this? My first reaction was, when I found out that the water was tainted, was, we need to leave. But the bigger picture for me was, well, I’m going to probably farm, and wherever we go, it’s going to be the same story.

Because all of agriculture in North America has changed to this? So, I asked that family — it took us about two minutes to make a vote — I said, do we stay and clean this mess up, or do we leave and get out of here and try to find a cleaner place? They voted, let’s stay and clean it up.

People say you can’t feed the world without pesticides.

I just don’t believe it. I just don’t believe that it’s all that necessary. For one thing, if we keep increasing production through close planting and killing every bug there is, there’s all kinds of costs. One of the costs is the medical costs that go with that. The other thing is all you have to do is begin to look at what the chemical companies have sort of done. They’ve made it possible for us to monocrop. You could never monocrop before you had all these chemicals, because you have one thing, and all the pests are going to come in and get it.

And there’s no predator that’s going to want to come there. Diversification allows you to get off of the pesticide treadmill. And so, if what we think is industrial farming is going to feed the world, well, we’re not even doing that now. I mean, there’s 10,000 people starve a day, and most of those are under 10 years old. So, obviously it’s a political solution, it’s not going to be, more pesticides, everybody eats. That is just totally not what’s going to happen. We need to diversify. And also, it’s not going to be us growing food for them. They need to grow their own foods in a way that makes sense, and not by buying from Dow, or DuPont, or any of those.

The answer is just not going to be in a bag or a jug.

Talk about pesticide treadmills.

The pesticide treadmill is something that every farmer has experienced. I have experienced it. I remember when. You have a pest, and you go in, and you kill the bug, but the pesticide that you use also kills some beneficial insects that were trying to get it under control. But, we get impatient. So, we will the pest, along with the beneficial. Now, when the pest returns — and they always do — there’s no beneficial there to control it. So, you’ve got to spray, and once you start spraying, you have to spray.

One cute thing, a fellow showed up here, and he says, Paul, I’ve got katydids, I’ve sprayed everything, and nothing works. And I said, you’re right, nothing works, and nothing works best. You need to remember that. Because we found out — and the scientists helped me discover — birds were taking out 98% of my katydids. We had so many of them here, but it’s like, popcorn. If you have popcorn, theatergoers come.

So, basically it’s all just a bunch of popcorn out there, and you shouldn’t worry too much.

Talk about how there’s not a problem with feeding the world that we need chemicals to solve.

Yeah, well, diversification, people think, now you’ve got to have a different tool for the corn, and then you’ve got to have a different tool for the peaches, and so wouldn’t it be easier if you just had all rows the same width, one big giant tractor, just make one pass, and back, and you’ve just done three acres It seems efficient, until you look at the fuel economy of these giant tracers. Oh, and the maintenance. Oh, and they cost each about a half a million. And then the guy goes into debt for his whole life. He can never come out.

If that scale of farming was so good, why is the suicide rate among Midwest farmers the highest it’s ever been? It’s all debt, it’s just a big problem. When you diversify, you have control, and the weather is not longer such a big factor, because maybe you get an early frost, but you have late peaches. So, they don’t affect it. Maybe you get hailed on, but you have things that aren’t affected by hail. There’s a tremendous stability in diversification, because you’re not at the mercies of this one-time slot on the market, with this one tractor. What if that one tractor breaks down?

Oh, and they break down, let me tell you. I don’t care how much you spend. Oh, you can’t get in the fields. So, diversification gives you all your eggs spread out in many little baskets. So, I don’t worry about hail anymore, I don’t worry about the market anymore, I don’t worry about so many things that I used to worry about. And I have wonderful customers that love it that today I have this peach, and then that one, and then a nectarine, and then watermelons. It’s a little more complicated, if you think of the tasks that I have to do.

But what’s more complicated? 50 things that you love to do, or one giant thing that you hate to do?

Can a diversified farm feed the world?

How can we feed the world? And is it going to be the big farms feeding it, or the small, diversified farm? The first thing is, is that the average farm size, in most of the country is probably an acre, half acre. I mean, they have to diversify. One of the things is, the farmer is going to feed his family first, but then he’s going to make extra, and that’s what’s going to feed the neighbor’s family.

If we tried to convert Asia or Africa to monocropping, you would be stuck on that pesticide treadmill. It would be so expensive. Who’s going to maintain the tractors over there? All you have to do is look at Cuba. They lost their petrochemicals. They lost their tractors. And the economy went up. There was better food selection, much more stable, what can we learn from that? That you can feed yourself and you can feed the world with diversity, small family farms. I know it’s true. I’ve experienced it.

Talk about the farm subsidy program.

The farm subsidy is kind of a price support thing. It’s really kind of manipulating a market that goes up and down. I think once you start doing that, when you take away risk from farming, you think, well, that’s going to make it great. Well, here’s what’s happened. The down side is that people just plant irregardless of whether there’s a market or not. Well, we’re going to get subsidies, anyway.

So, just plant it. The world doesn’t need it. We’ll just the world will be awash in soy beans, but who cares, we’re going to get paid anyway. The ignoring of what I would call market and supply — demand and supply — is a silly notion, and it’s very unsustainable, and it’s very expensive. I don’t like the idea of paying people not to plant something, or paying them to grow something that’s in surpluses already. It doesn’t make common sense.

What kind of behavior does the subsidy program promote?

The subsidy kind of promotes the kind of farming that doesn’t pay attention to the customer or to the market. The way that we’re subsidizing is, it creates a notion that we can ignore the balance of supply and demand. And it’s very illogical. There’s a much better way. If we’re going to spend some money on agriculture, I’ve got a better idea.

What’s your thoughts on support for sustainable farming?

Well, if we were to take monies from the government to improvement farming in America, you wouldn’t use it to support a price of a bean or anything like that. What we need to do — and I wish I could afford to do it, but I can’t — I don’t need extra money for my peaches. What I would like to do is, to move towards a better factor that’s more fuel-efficient. This tractor back here gets maybe 2 miles to the gallon, if I’m lucky. I mean, I doubt if I get 2 miles to the gallon.

Of course, we don’t rate them like that. It’s by the hour. But, I would love to go the newer technologies, biodiesel — although that has a downside — but I think that that’s a cost that a farmer like myself, and many farmers in America, are not going to be able to make that technological leap. It would be in everybody’s interests, not just soy bean growers or corn growers. It would be in everybody’s interests if we could help farmers to use less water through the technologies that already exist.

And I’m for that kind of thing. I don’t need a handout. I just need a little help getting to the newer technologies.

Money is authorized by the farm bill, but then appropriations cuts it down. What’s your sense on that?

The farmers are the last to get involved in government, it seems. Some of the larger farmers probably are kind of hooked on the dole, and that’s made it possible for them to continue to farm the way they farm, even though most of them would tell you that their pressure is so great that they’re not sure they really like farming anymore.

But farmers kind of independent sorts. They don’t often go to Congress, for example. They don’t write their Congressman much. You see a few of the bigwigs, you know? But this is a new notion, that maybe we can speak and be heard. We heard that it was a representative government, but a lot of times we’re too busy. Oh, I’ve got to finish my irrigation. Oh, my tractor won’t start. I’ve got to fix that. Well, I’ll get around to it. But I think farmers now are thinking about, maybe it’s time that if it’s about farming, shouldn’t the farmers sit on those boards? Shouldn’t he tell them what he really needs and what would make a difference, rather than some big farmer who’s basically in the pocket of some big corporation say, yeah, we need a few more million, so we can improve the imbalance of trade here.

That’s not what this is about. I think we want good farmland in a sort of perpetual fertility using chemicals that don’t disturb the ecology or the environment. And we can use less water, more efficiently, and driving tractors that don’t pollute. And why don’t we have a goal? Instead of just sort of keeping the limp, cancer-ridden policy that have now alive? Take it off of life support, and let’s start with a new baby. Let’s grow a new entity here. I’m ready.

Care to say anything about the environmental impact of current farm policy?

I think when I think about modern farming and the footprint that it’s left on the environment, it’s not a real pretty one. And I think farmer’s never really understood that footprint before, but like myself, when your child gets sick, you being to say, who did this? What is this? And then I see my own part in that.

Most farmers are now thinking, wow, maybe for reasons of liability, maybe for reasons of my own safety, and maybe for my children’s sake, maybe the Almighty Dollar needs to be taken into account, but maybe also future generation’s health needs to be taken into account. There is a bright side, it’s maybe not coming as fast as we thought, but in some ways, miraculously fast. The move towards sustainable, more environmentally-friendly methods of farming. I see it happening more and more.

The downside on all of it, if there is a downside, is that we’re going back to mechanical means of taking care of weeds, and a lot of this type of thing, and that requires more fuel. So, we can’t just go back, we’ve also got to go forward, and that’s going to take some science, and maybe there’s some money for people, to figure out different ways. We’re not exactly going back to the 1800s, here.

But in some ways, we will apply those old technologies, and hopefully, instead of leaving any kind of a footprint, you know, when we farm, the land should be more fertile, it should be cleaner. The water going through my ranch is filtered. It’ll be pure for it’s having gone through my dirt. That’s the goal, not a small, environmental negative footprint. But a positive, good footprint.

Talk about your dream of having your son take over.

I think it’s every farmer’s hope that one of his children — son or daughter — will eventually take over the family farm. That becomes very much on the front burner when you get to be my age. And I’ll be 60 in a couple of months, and I think to myself, will my son be able to do this? Can I get the farm in such a way that when I hand it off, it’s not such a heavy baton that he falls down?

How can I set it up so that he’ll be able to afford the pumping costs. Can I retrofit — can I get my tractors running good enough so that when I’m gone, he’ll be able to say, wow, didn’t leave me with an old, dirty dog that won’t even go anymore? I’m trying to fix this machine. My Pack Line is 27 years old. They don’t make parts for it anymore.

We can’t afford the new stuff. So, I’ve got to rebuild it. I’ve been rebuilding it now for the past two weeks. And I’m kind of excited and proud. But that’s the hope and goal of every young — what am I saying, every old farmer like myself — can we give it to the young in such a way that it will be able to make a living for him and give him some pleasure and give the neighbors and everyone pleasure. That’s what farms do.

They give pleasure and they make a living. That’s what I’m working on.

Talk about food policy in general.

Well, when we think of food safety, we generally think of a pesticide, either on the outside of the fruit, or somehow systemic, and it got in. And I think our current policy is not really addressing it all that much. Probably on our own, farmers are addressing those issues. Mostly I think they’re thinking in terms of liability, that’s always a factor, they’re scared. [Temec] gets found in watermelons about 15 years ago, and everybody panics.

What’s it doing there? You know, food safety is a factor, but we also have to think in terms of another part of that is, how far did the fruit travel and how much smoke was put in the air via a diesel truck, which we all experience on the freeways now? You know, there is a safety factor that is about the environment that has to do with just getting the fruit from A to B — which now today is a little over 1,200 miles. That’s how far each piece of fruit travels, before you get a chance to buy it in your store.

If we want safe food, it requires all the systems to be right. And one of the first things is, is that we should sell locally, buy locally, that cleans up air. You don’t think of cleaning the air by buying local strawberries, but that’s one of the ways you do it. So, the big picture in food safety is, uh, yeah, we’re not addressing it as a policy. I don’t know where the policy is. Maybe we’ll develop that — maybe this year. I’m working on it.

What do you think of the role of our electoral system and the way money works in politics?

Our system is really broken. Our political system is very broken, and I think we’re seeing that in the most obvious way, in that we’re basically fighting wars now to maintain financial advantage, and to keep a corner on natural resources. You know, that’s not what we used to fight wars for. I don’t know why we’ve fought wards, sometimes, but at least in World War II, we thought we knew what the enemy was.

But now they talk about enemies. What is this? It’s somebody else who wants your oil. You want to kill them for it. I feel like that large corporate interests — and they’re multinational — are basically driving, not only our polices here at home, but also foreign policies. And that’s why America is really not liked very well anymore. They can see through it. I mean, we — it looks very transparent. Oh, we see why you’re doing that. It’s to benefit your own.

The funny thing is that the small people in America — which accounts for about 95% of us — which is your middle and lower class individuals — don’t really benefit from all of this. And I do think that democracy was set up where people will go in and have representatives that talk it over, the best heads on that subject. For example, in foreign policy, I don’t know how many farmers are sitting on any of these boards in appropriations. I don’t think farmers are really wanted in there. They’re just pawns. We just, you know, use them.

But farmers used to be independent and tough, and they would not sit down and play dead like this. Maybe they’ve just gotten depressed, and maybe they’ve become jaded. But I think it’s that they’re waking up. I’m excited that I’m being asked to talk to people and ask, well, what do you think about foreign policy? Nobody asked me that before. And before I would say, oh, I’m too busy, but I’m not too busy now, because I think America — when they think of farms, they still think of, you know, a mother, and a father, and a dog a big, and a goat, and a sheep, and some grapes.

And that golden book view of farming is a good view. And I think if we return to it, uh, America would be shocked to find that would not only have vast amounts of food, we’re not going to go backwards here. We’ll just have more abundance of locally-produced wonderful stuff, and we won’t have to be worrying so much about what’s on the food, or on the land, or in the water. It’s not that hard.

Where are politicians who represented you getting their campaign money?

Well, when I think of our representatives, I know that I’m certainly not one that’s contributing to their pile of money that helps them get re-elected. And I know that to get elected it costs so much money, and I’m sorry that we have such a system like this, because if you need that kind of millions of dollars to get elected, then who’s paying for that?

And people that give you money to get elected want something back, whereas, I don’t pay money, and I don’t have extra money, and I do want something from my repetitive. I want to be represented. But, when they get bought and paid for, it’s very difficult, and that hurts. I’d like it to change, and I feel like America is about ready for a change. And maybe this Iraq war is going to wake us up. I hope so. I hope we wake up and say, we can’t allow corporations to make policy decisions for us anymore. We can’t do that. I’m ready for a change.

How did you feel when you took the farm over?

Well, there was an excitement, when you first come back to the ranch. Of course, I was born and raised on a farm, so I knew all the tasks. But my sense was that I’m here for good, I’m here for life. And I did anticipate that my children will take over, just as I took over from Dad. It is a big responsibility, because there are so many unknowns. And the market was on a downtrend when I took it, and it sort of got worse.

But now, people are sort of waking up to the small, local, family farms, and I feel an excitement that maybe I haven’t felt for five years. I feel like we’re going to make think. I don’t know that I’ve felt that way five years ago. I feel like [Wyatt] is going to have the farm that he can call his own, and I can give it to him, as close to debt-free as possible. If I lost that hope, I couldn’t farm. I would just dry up and blow away like an old leaf.

So, I don’t know if that’s a false hope. I don’t think it is.

Anything you want to say?

When the government has money to give away, it doesn’t have money. That’s taxpayer money. And it should really be for only one thing, improving the public welfare and good. It could be to make the environment safer, it could be to make our lives safer. It could be to improve the healthcare system. It can be to improve our abilities to feed ourselves, and not be dependent on food from other countries or oil from other countries. It should always be spent for that, not to improve the bottom line of a company.

It’s just such a simple concept. If we’re going to tax ourselves, how should we spend the money? To improve the lot of the lives of the people in this country and in other countries, to improve their standard of living, to make it safer, happier, healthier. And that should be the first question. How is this money being spent so as to make our lives happier and healthier? And if it’s not doing that, then cut it off. That’s the question that we have to ask.

Everybody is searching for an alternative to methyl bromide, and that’s to fumigate the soil so they can replant back a crop right away. They don’t have to wait. But we don’t really need a new chemical. The oldest method for reclaiming soil’s health is [fallowing], and that’s what we’ve done over here. We’ve left this field fallow, and we’re going to leave it that way for about three years.

And if we get good water next year, I’m going to plant alfalfa out there. But not this year. There’s not enough water. It’s a drought year. But that ground will clean itself. You don’t have to chemically treat it.

People like to know about the soils. Are they living soils? Living soils are exactly what they sound like. There’s something alive. And if you had a real high-powered lens, you would see how many bugs are moving. I’m seeing about, probably right here, upwards of 100. They’re minuscule, but they are contributing, to the health of this soil. There’s a little hopper of some sort.

We call them decomposers. They eat all of this stuff, and of course, you have to grow grasses, and seeds, and things. And they digest it, turn it into manure, so without having to buy a whole lot of artificial fertilizer.

And it’s all over in here. So, all these little tiny bugs, you can barely see them, but they are making a move, improving my soil, and they’re aerating it, fertilizing it, doing the work that I would ordinarily have to do. And they do it for me, so, it’s a self-fertile soil. A pretty wonderful thing.

Well, there was one spray that we all come to depend on back in the ’50s and ’60s. It was organophosphate, and it is a toxin of the central nervous system of a bug, and also for us. And it worked so good, because it killed the pest, but it also killed almost every other thing that was out there.

One spray of organophosphate out here would end millions of lives of small, tiny insects that people didn’t realize the benefit that they were giving them. The other thing was, the reason the bird population dropped during that time was that the bird eggs were affected by the organophosphate. They didn’t hatch out.

And so then, we lost our birds, and everybody — even kids know this — birds like to eat worms. Now, they don’t just eat earthworms, they love eating fruit worms. And so they’re up in the trees pulling them off those green fruit worms. So, you need birds. Birds are probably our number one defense against harmful pests. And you just don’t want to kill those. Plus, they’re pretty to look at.

Well, we were going to go to a birthday party. [My son] was complaining of being tired, and I disciplined him. I mean, c’mon, you’ve got to go, it’s a birthday party, what’s wrong with you? I had no idea that he was actually almost to die, and he didn’t know, of course. He was little.

The next day, he couldn’t wake up. He turned white. I saw bruising on him that were just little places where he had stepped and fallen. And I thought, what’s wrong? We got in, and within 24 hours, the doctors said that he was dying. I was shocked. How can you go from a party and then 24 hours later, death?

And so we had to get a transfusion in him, but his veins had collapsed. They kept working on it, and at about 3:00 in the morning the nurse came in and said, we were successful in getting some blood into him. And take a look at the bottom of his lower lip, and it turned pink. He was completely white, like a piece of paper.

So, I didn’t have a camera, and I wanted to record it, so I quickly whipped out a pencil and got some paper and did a drawing of him in the hospital. He was still wearing a T-shirt that he had when we took him in. We just took off his party clothes, and into the hospital he went. So, it says, “Wyatt, all better, 1983.” He wasn’t all better, but at least we crossed the big hurdle. We were able to keep him alive during that critical period. And now, today, he’s doing great. 27 years old and no hint of cancer remaining.

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