Every year, there’s a new regulation, a new tax, a new subsidy that only seems to prop up the big players. Small farmers like me?
We’re drowning in paperwork and costs. The farm bill’s supposed to support us, but it feels like it’s written for the corporations, not the little guy.
I read somewhere that family farms are disappearing at a rate of thousands a year. Ain’t hard to see why.
The banks want their money, the markets want cheap food, and the government’s too busy arguing to notice folks like me are barely hanging on. I got a neighbor, Tom, who sold his land last year to a developer.
Now it’s gonna be condos instead of cornfields. Broke my heart to see it, but I can’t blame him. Sometimes, it feels like the whole system’s rigged to push us out.
And yet, I stay. Why? Because this land is in my blood. Because every spring, when the first green shoots poke through the soil, I feel like a kid again.
Because there’s nothing like the quiet of a field at dawn, when it’s just you and the earth and God. Those moments, they’re worth all the aches and pains, all the sleepless nights worrying about the bank. They’re what keep me going, even when the world tells me I’m obsolete.
I ain’t saying technology’s all bad. I got a smartphone now—Mary’d laugh her head off if she saw me fumbling with it. And I’ll admit, some of those new seeds yield better than the old ones.
But there’s something lost when you trade heart for efficiency, when you let a machine do what a man’s hands were made for. Farming ain’t just about feeding people; it’s about knowing the land, respecting it, living with it. You can’t program that into a computer.
I think about the kids today, growing up in a world that moves too fast, where everything’s disposable, even the folks who grow their food.
I wonder what they’ll do when the last of us old farmers are gone, when the fields are all concrete and the only ones left are the big agribusinesses.
Will they miss us then? Will they remember the good old days, when a handshake meant something, and a farmer’s word was as good as gold?
I don’t have all the answers. All I know is that I’ll keep farming as long as I can, because it’s who I am. I’ll keep plowing my fields, tending my animals, and praying for rain.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s someone out there who’ll read this and understand. Someone who remembers the smell of fresh-turned earth, the creak of a barn door, the pride of a hard day’s work.
Someone who knows that the heart of this country still beats in places like my farm, even if the world’s too busy to notice.
So here I am, an old farmer with a story to tell, hoping you’ll listen. Hoping you’ll remember the good old days, when we worked the land with love and grit, and we were proud to do it.
If you’re out there, if you’re one of us, drop me a line. Let’s share a memory or two. Let’s remind the world that farmers like me ain’t gone yet, and we’re still fighting for the life we love.
