KAYTE YOUNG:  From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, this is Earth Eats, and I'm your host, Kayte Young.

BETH HOFFMAN:  It's a great thing to be outside, to have birds chirping, to be around green grass and animals, but the problem has become that you can't really be a business unless you are a financially viable business.

KAYTE YOUNG:  This week on the show, we explore the economics of small scale farming and debunk some of the myths of the agrarian lifestyle. We talk with Beth Hoffman, author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Farming in America. And we hear from farmers across Indiana about how they're making it pay. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thanks for listening to Earth Eats. I'm Kayte Young. We talk a lot about farming here on Earth Eats, and the future of farming, and the fact that the current population of farmers is aging. We aren't really seeing that next generation of farmers coming up, at least, not in the numbers that are needed to keep the system going. And there are plenty of questions about that system, or those systems. Are they sustainable? Is the current state of agriculture in this country what we want for the future? In other words, who's gonna be growing our food, and how are they gonna go about it in ways that are kind to the planet and to the farmers and producers? Farming does manage to attract people, but often it's the myth of farm life that is appealing, and beginning growers are quickly disillusioned by the grueling demands of the work, the broken food system and the extremely tight profit margins.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Most small farms rely on off-farm income to make ends meet. My guest today has written a book examining these issues in vivid and often candid detail.

BETH HOFFMAN:  My name is Beth Hoffman. I am a journalist. I covered food and agriculture for about 25 years, and now I'm a farmer.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Beth Hoffman is the author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America.

BETH HOFFMAN:  I grew up mostly outside of New York City in New Jersey and I was born in New York. I've lived in many different places in the country, but ended up in San Francisco. I went to UC Berkley for grad school. I met my husband in Berkley. He at the time was working as a butcher for Whole Foods, but he had grown up in Iowa, and within the first few minutes of meeting him, he told me how he had just been in Iowa, he had just been with his sons back at the farm, and that this was his dream of moving back to the farm. And I didn't really think anything of it. He just was my neighbor, and I didn't know much about Iowa.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Little did she know that that encounter of her neighbor was the start of something that eventually altered the direction of her life and her work. Beth and her neighbor John became romantically involved and eventually married. They started spending summers in Iowa.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Being out early morning, working on fence with the family, swimming in the ponds, chasing cattle that had gotten out, all those kinds of things.

KAYTE YOUNG:  As Beth started developing her own relationship with the land, they started talking about what it might look like to take over the farm.

BETH HOFFMAN:  You know, this combination of having really researched and learned a lot about agriculture, and this opportunity to go take over the farm, they started to kind of meld together, obviously, as like, "Oh, this could be a great opportunity to really try and put into action what we have learned over these years and what I've been studying," and to see if it actually works the way that people say it works, 'cause it's obviously very different to do something than it is to write about something.

KAYTE YOUNG:  There was one glaring barrier to their agrarian dream. Someone else was already farming the land. John's dad had grown up there, and he'd been farming for 50 years. He was engaged in the standard farming practices of the area, growing corn and soy beans and raising some cattle. Though he was in his early eighties at the time, he was still actively managing the operation. John and Beth wanted to try something different, and John's father bristled at some of the ideas they brought to the table.

BETH HOFFMAN:  He at some point, you know, said to me, like, "Well, what do you want to do with this farm?" And I said, "I don't know. Something like grow grains, food grade grains, small grains or go organic." And he was like, "Organic?" You know, and he went outside and he got this hoe that had been beaten down to like an inch wide from so much use, and he said, you know, "This is what organic means. It means working, you know, working your butt off and having hoes that are worn down like this, you know, and do you wanna really do that with all your time, is be out here hoeing weeds?" And you know, I didn't know. I mean, I was really, to be honest, a city slicker who thought she knew a lot about food and farming, and he knew that. You know? So, it was a good question. Like, "Really? Is that really what we're gonna come and do? Is that just idealistic thinking?"

KAYTE YOUNG:  But they managed to sort it out, and eventually they decided on cattle, specifically grass-finished beef. Now, Beth is the first to point out that raising cattle comes with environmental concerns, but methane aside...

BETH HOFFMAN:  This is the perfect area for cattle. It's, it's forested, so we have a lot of trees, we have rolling hills here with really great grasses, and you can have prairie here, and we don't, we don't use any irrigation. There's not any kind of water issues here. We have ponds that we can get water out of very easily, so we don't even have to have the cows in the water sources. So, I mean, it's just sort of an ideal situation for livestock, and it's been problematic that a lot of farms have gotten rid of livestock because they do do ecological services for the land like manure that's natural and naturally occurring [LAUGHS] that they just deposit on their own. And they were here already, so it was kind of an easy way we thought we could get here, and making some money within a pretty short amount of time.

BETH HOFFMAN:  We thought if we bought the cattle from John's dad, we could just get up and rolling much quicker. So, we kept the cattle and now have converted them all to being grass-finished here on the land, so we don't sell out the sale barn and we don't sell into feed lots like most American ranchers.

KAYTE YOUNG:  In her book, Beth Hoffman goes over the details of how beef typically gets from the pasture to the plate. Cows usually start out grazing on pasture with their moms, drinking cow's milk and eating some grass. Then when they reach a certain age or weight, they go to a sale barn to get auctioned off to the feedlot to be finished before being sold to the processor.

BETH HOFFMAN:  What happens in many, many places in the country now is there's no longer really a sale barn, so there's no auctioning and no competitive purchasing. There's just one buyer in your area, and some people contract with them before the season so that they know how much they're gonna make. Many ranchers do not contract with them, but they then have that one feedlot to sell to after they've finished with the calving. So, what you earn for your each cow is not necessarily have anything to do with the cost of raising that cow. So, sometimes it drops below the cost of production or ride up the cost of production, and there's nothing that those ranchers can do about it 'cause there's no one else to sell to.

BETH HOFFMAN:  I talk about this a bit in the book because a little bit of why we didn't want to sell at the sale barn is that we didn't want to be working with this kind of a commodity system where you lose control over how much your animals are worth, and where they go to. Like, I wanna know that they're treated well, that they are healthy their whole lives. And so, we made the decision right off the bat not to sell into the commodity market, so that meant that we weren't gonna make any money for two years because when you raise them on, as opposed to that scenario where you sell them at nine months, it takes somewhere around 24 months for a cow to be a finished weight when they just eat grass.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So they're, they're fattened up more quickly on corn, it sounds like?

BETH HOFFMAN:  More quickly, and with more fat content. Grass-finished beef really has a different flavor. Luckily for us, everyone who's purchased them from us directly has, has told us that it's actually the best beef they've ever had, which is not often the case with grass-finished beef because it is much leaner. Sometimes it can be very tough.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, have you been able to work out some of those obstacles of dealing with processing and getting the meat to market?

BETH HOFFMAN:  We've been, right now, selling the bulk of the cattle to a wholesaler who sells directly to consumers. So, it's a better deal for us than, say, working with a processor like JBS.

BETH HOFFMAN:  We work with very small companies. Iowa-centric companies that deal directly with consumers, but they kind of handle the marketing and the distribution. They have larger, you know, email lists than we do. So, we've been selling the bulk of it to them because then we don't have to figure out the processing. And then we've sold just a smaller number directly to consumers. It's all going quite well. We haven't had big problems in finding people. It's a little bit of a niche thing; people who want grass-finished beef is a specific kind of customer.

KAYTE YOUNG:  While Beth Hoffman is critical of the typical feedlot-finished meat processing system, she's quick to point out who is profiting and who's taking the risk. The big processing plants like JBS, Tyson and National Beef, they don't own the feedlots. So, for instance, when the pandemic first started and many processing plants had to slow down or shut down, since it was impossible to keep COVID from spreading in these conditions, it was the feedlots and the individual ranchers who took the loss, while JBS managed to make record profits. She points out that while these systems aren't really working for ranchers and farmers, they didn't just come out of nowhere.

BETH HOFFMAN:  It's really important to understand why ranchers did that. They gave up that power because it takes a lot of time to do every single part of the chain yourself. So, to do the marketing, to do the sales, to do the packaging, everything, is a lot of time. So, companies came in and made that available for farmers and said, "Okay. Basically, you're the people who like to be outside. You don't like to be sitting in front of a computer now." Farmers typically are business people who wanna be doing that kinda stuff, who wanna be outside using your bodies, riding machinery, whatever sorts of things, working with animals. And so that power kinda got siphoned away, and with it went the money, out the door.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. Oh, it's complicated.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Very complicated.

KAYTE YOUNG:  If you're just joining us, my guest is Beth Hoffman, journalist, farmer and author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America. After a short break, we'll continue our conversation, looking at who has access to land in the first place, and examining some of the cultural myths around farming in America. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here. This is Earth Eats. Let's return to my conversation with Beth Hoffman, author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You know, you guys didn't go into it all starry-eyed and naïve. Your husband has a history with farming, you knew quite a bit yourself, and you did research and you came up with a plan. But even when you worked out a business plan, it wasn't gonna be a lot of money that you were gonna be making, even if everything went according to plan. Can you talk about that a little bit?

BETH HOFFMAN:  Yes. You know, when we sat down to really work out the numbers, not only were we losing more than we thought in the first few years, which we, you know, only had X amount of money we were gonna put into this all, but even once we got past some of the big capital purchase like buying the cattle, we were still, you know, making in like the $20,000 to $30,000 a year range, which for one person full-time and me half-time, you know, it's not very much, and that's if everything goes quite well. And it really points to an issue that I talk about throughout the book, which is the fact that we were coming into it with privilege, and we were very aware of that, in thinking that we had some family wealth, not exorbitant wealth but some, and some savings, and we had access to the land, which was being leased but at a very discounted rate.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Most people who wanna get into farming don't; they don't have this privilege. They don't have family wealth that's been able to be built generationally, like many white farmers, white landowners, and most of the land in this country is owned by white people. 98% of land, in fact, is owned by white people. So, it's just a lot of the book explores that kind of question. How did this happen? How did we get here? And maybe some of the thoughts about how we can change that up. So we used my example, our example of our lives to really talk about these bigger issues in agriculture. So it's kind of part memoir, but not only.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. You're definitely exploring those issues about access to land, land theft that's happened over the generations. Like, it's not just accident or good luck or, [LAUGHS] you know, hard work that puts most of the agriculture land in the hands of white owners. So, do you want to talk a little bit about that history and about your thoughts on building a more just system, as well as a more sustainable system?

BETH HOFFMAN:  It's kind of a deep, vast history, which hopefully white people are [LAUGHS] becoming more knowledgeable about. You know, in this area, the Meskwaki tribe was here previous to white people coming in. And I talk a lot about the settlement that happened and sort of the land rushes that the railroad barons fueled throughout history. They were given land by the US government all around the railroad tracks, and they had some sample farms, like "bonanza farms" they were called, where they put in tons of money to make them work very well and then could say, "Oh, look. This is the perfect place. Everyone should come out here and buy this land and live this amazing agricultural dream," but it was really just advertising. And so, it was this fueled frenzy by railroad barons who became enormously wealthy.

BETH HOFFMAN:  And so, it brought a lot of white people out to the Midwest and areas like the Dakotas, and a lot of the time there were tribes that still actually legally owned the land; there weren't even treaties that had happened yet with them. And so, that's one case where white settlement was really promoted and land taken. So, I talk about that sort of situation, but also just kind of the very well-documented discriminatory behaviors of the USDA, that there's been lawsuits with black farmers and Latino farmers, Native American farmers, and women. They've all had different kind of class action suits, where it's been very well-documented, that kind of discrimination.

KAYTE YOUNG:  In lending?

BETH HOFFMAN:  Yes, in lending and access to programs, even just expertise, like having somebody come out that can give you advice on a pest or whatever sort of thing. That was given to white farmers and white farm families at much larger rates than anyone else. So, it really promoted the kind of settlement that we have, where it is white land ownership, and that was what was promoted by the government, it was what was promoted by banks, extension, land grant universities. Everybody was sort of working in that same manner.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. This is a little different direction, but since you brought up the USDA and the land grant university extension offices, is there guidance and support and resources now for the kinds of farming that you wanna do?

BETH HOFFMAN:  Nobody in the USDA office knew of programs, of experts, of anybody to help us do anything but corn and soya bean. It's just such a lack of knowledge, and a lack of, honestly, like, interest. You know, you have to have individuals in these offices, like any government office. I mean, you could have a million programs, but if nobody is really knowledgeable about them and excited about them and going out and saying to people, "Here's what you can do," it becomes very difficult.

KAYTE YOUNG:  In her book, Beth Hoffman examines some of the myths of American agriculture, including the stories of rugged individualism and wholesome farming families, perpetuated by figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Today we have that really potent imagery with this homesteading idea of people leaving the city and they're gonna go get their hands in the dirty and be farmers, and it's a beautiful ideal. It's a great thing to be outside, to have birds chirping, to be around green grass and, and animals, all of those kinds of things, but the problem has become that, particularly with people who are ecologically minded or want to really nourish their communities and provide healthy foods, that those ideals override the idea that you can't really be a business unless you are a financially viable business.

BETH HOFFMAN:  And so, people start undercutting themselves. You see often in studies, they've looked at things like community-supported agriculture, CSA programs, where customers buy into it, and the idea is supposed to be that the customer pre-buys for the season. You give the farm a certain amount, and then you get a box of food each week. And it's supposed to be that you're supporting the farm, no matter what happens, that you're just, you're there, you're along for the ride. But the CSA managers and, and owners of the farm often start undercutting it an writing out these very idealistic newsletters about how great everything is, and they start packing the boxes with what ends up being often too much food, and not making a profit in the long run because they are so concerned with nourishing the community, for example.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And customer satisfaction.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Customer satisfaction, correct. And so, you see a lot CSAs buying from other farms to supplement their box at a loss, things like that. And this is from studies, this isn't, like, just an anecdotal sort of thing. And you also get, especially with farms that are really interested in the ecology and doing things environmentally right, quote unquote, it's so easy to spend way too much time and way too much energy on it, and then lead to this idea of self-exploitation, where you are in service to the farm, but the farm isn't actually making anything so it's in service to you, and people end up burning out. So, it's been a huge problem that people will do an internship or something at a farm, maybe try and start a farm, but never really, you know, after three years, five years, people leave because they're not making a living.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. I mean, I have some friends who say, you know, that farming continues to get more people doing it, even though you can't make a living doing it because it just looks like so much fun, you know? [LAUGHS ] Or not fun, but it appeals to a certain kind of person, and they head out to do it with all these great intentions, and it's not viable, but they keep getting replaced by the next set of young people who find it appealing.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Yeah, and I think there's a misunderstanding that it's a simple life, right? And everything that we've talked about, we've kind of ended by saying, "Oh, it's really complicated," right? [LAUGHS] So there's nothing simple about entering into an industry that is very complicated. So, you have to kind of remember there's a context in which you are farming. And I don't wanna sound like it's a problem, making money on a farm is a problem for small scale, diversified, organic kinds of farms. It's pervasive throughout, all kinds of farmers are struggling. The ones that have, you know, corn and soy bean, our neighbors, you know, they are having problems as well, and the flip side of that is that all kinds of farms also are successful. So, even very small farms, I think what's important about understanding the problems is that if you come in with your eyes open to what the real issues are and you have a mind to the business and finding a niche for yourself, by all reports, people can make a go of it.

BETH HOFFMAN:  And even if, on our farm, if we are making $20,000 to $30,000 a year, if we are planning for that, that's kind of okay, you know? If we kind of own our house outright, you know, 'cause we bought the house for $40,000, right, which when we lived in San Francisco was not a possibility; you couldn't own a room for $40,000, right? So, I mean, there's, there's opportunities to organize yourselves in such a fashion that $30,000 is going to be okay, especially if you have off-farm income, which is what most farms have.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. And I think that what you're saying is that we need to start talking honestly about what farming really is instead of perpetuating these myths. And it's not that it's impossible, it's that we need to start having more honest conversations, and it seems like your book is really an effort in doing that, especially that you get really into the nitty-gritty. You actually talk about how much money things cost, you know, what you put into it, what you're getting out of it, and I think that's kind of a rare thing to come across, is somebody who's really willing to talk about the details.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Yeah. So, I wanted to be really very forthcoming about, you know, and vulnerable about our situation so that other people can learn from it and understand how it works. And I think what you're saying is exactly true, like if we, if we understand the barriers and we understand the reasons why things are the way they are, then we can address it. But if, for example, like, the myth of agribusiness having brainwashed farmers, right? This is a prevalent thing where we just kinda chalk everything up to, like, "Oh, that's agribusiness." And I think that if we don't understand that there's reasons why the businesses excelled, that they found the problems that farmers were having, like with too many weeds, for example, and you created a product for it and you're marketing it and there's expert help to get people using it. And that is how it was adopted and that's why farmers still use it.

BETH HOFFMAN:  It's not a matter of them just being brainwashed. And so, you can't address it if we don't understand that and admit it. You can't find solutions to problems that we are not addressing.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Right, and this kind of circles back to what we were talking about at the beginning about John's father and how he wasn't just like, "Oh, I'm opposed to these ridiculous ideas that you have." It was more like, "I've been doing this. I know what it takes to make a living doing this, and I don't want you to lose." You know, "I don't want you to fail, and I don't want my farm to fail," but like, also doesn't want you guys to fail.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Exactly. And it's so important, I think. And just with new farmers coming in, like, there's been a lot of emphasis on land access, for example, which is a huge problem. But you can't just have land access, right? If we're talking about all these problems that we have with support programs, with university extension, you know, where, where are they in helping people do different things on the farm? If the problem is all of those, we can't just address it with providing land access or encouraging people to have cooperatives. We have to be able to think about things in a much broader sense.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And understanding those systems that need to be in place, the infrastructure that needs to be in place, whether it's for selling, you know, locally raised grass-fed meat, you know, having more sustainable [LAUGHS] processing facilities, locally, but also, even with, with vegetable farmers and fruit growers that, you know. If the only model is this CSA, which you talked about, or selling every Saturday at a farmer's market, like, it doesn't seem like that's how we actually change a system. It creates niche markets, but it doesn't really change a system.

BETH HOFFMAN:  When we're thinking about systems change, we really have to think about all of those elements of it: things like the funding of it, the expertise levels, the day-to-day support of the people, the diversity of who we want on the land. There has to be more support than just land, for example.

BETH HOFFMAN:  I think that the takeaway for the general public and for consumers is it's great to be looking for solutions, but you have to understand the problems as well in order to find the ones that actually work. I think that if if people want to really help, one of the ways is to really understand the complexity of problems and how and why people are doing what they do. Farmers don't just farm corn and soya beans because, you know, they're being brainwashed, like I said, or because of subsidies. It's much more complex. So, if we want people to not be growing as much corn and soya beans, those things have to be addressed, things like the ease of doing it, the marketability of other products. Those are, are huge, complex problems that we really need the brain power of people that are in things like technology to look for the real solutions.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That's Beth Hoffman, journalist and farmer.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me.

BETH HOFFMAN:  Thanks for having me. It was great.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Her book is called Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America, published in 2021 with Island Press. You can find more about her work on our website, eartheats.org. After a short break, we'll catch an episode of the Hoosier Young Farmer podcast, called Making it Pay. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Earth Eats is a radio show and a podcast, and we also make videos featuring recipes from my home kitchen. Payton Knobeloch produces them with videographers Jacob Lindauer and Jacob Lindsey. We've got recipes savory and sweet, stove top and baked, and one of my favorites is a cinnamon pecan-filled Bosc pear cloaked in a flaky pastry, baked until golden and served with a honey-lemon chamomile sauce. You'll find all of our recipe videos when you search for Earth Eats on YouTube, where you can like and subscribe.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Regular listeners may recall that we've recently featured episodes from the Hoosier Young Farmer podcast. It's produced by Alex Chambers and hosted by Liz Brownly. The mission of the podcast is to update the narrative on food and farming in Indiana by hearing from the farmers themselves. In this episode they take up some of the very same topics addressed in our conversation with Beth Hoffman. Let's listen.

ALEX:  Hey, Liz.

LIZ:  Oh hey, Alex.

ALEX:  Wanna get it started?

LIZ:  Okay, sure. [LAUGHS] This is the Hoosier Young Farmers podcast, and this episode is called Making It Pay.

ALEX:  Right. A lot of the farmers we talked with didn't come from farming families, which means they had to start from the ground up, so to speak. And I mean, starting a business is never easy, farming maybe even more so. First you need land.

LIZ:  Oh, and hey, listen to episode one for more stories on that.

ALEX:  Yes. But you also need equipment, and seeds, and compost.

LIZ:  Yep.

ALEX:  Greenhouses.

LIZ:  Uh-huh.

ALEX:  Hoses.

LIZ:  Mm-hmm.

ALEX:  Animals.

LIZ:  Mm-hmm.

ALEX:  If you've got animals, you need fences.

LIZ:  Mm-hmm.

ALEX:  More fences.

LIZ:  Yep.

ALEX:  So I'm curious, Liz, how did you and Nate get started? Like, how did you afford it?

LIZ:  Well, okay. So, we're unique in that I actually did come from a farming family. Nate did not, he's a city boy. But my parents, you know, they stopped farming in the 1980s, during the farm crisis, when US policy was get big or get out, and a lot of small farms shut down. And so, they managed, though, to hang onto the land, and when we moved home in 2013 to start farming, the barns were actually, like, full of stuff that hadn't been used in three decades. So, we scavenged the barns for usable equipment and used our savings to buy most of those fences you mentioned, but we also started pretty small. The first year was like four pigs and 45 turkeys and no laying hens. Like, super small to make sure that the markets were there and that people wanted our food, and we've been building up our whole farm a little bit at a time. And then we both worked off-farm those first years to have, you know, cashflow.

ALEX:  Yeah. So are you making a good living now?

LIZ:  Oh boy, not really. [LAUGHS] The farm covers all its costs. I'm really proud to say that it usually has enough profit to pay for investment in infrastructure, so that we can choose some big project to grow the farm the next year, like adding more pastures to expand our sheep flock. And we can afford for Nate to farm full-time now, which is a win. I still work off-farm part-time, and that income is really what covers our daily living expenses. So, we're still working on that, [LAUGHS] on the finances. But you know, a sustainable farm's bottom line, it's threefold, right? So, finances are one of those three, but it's also about community and the environment, and we feel really good about how we're trying to help build up community in Southeast Indiana and, and how we're caring for the land and seeing so many wild creatures come back, you know? But we'd also really like to make some more money.

ALEX:  Yeah.

LIZ:  But on most days, it's worth it. We love what we're doing, and, and I think that's the case for a lot of small farmers. Because it's so hard to make a living, most small farmers do it in part just because they're passionate. But you know, even when you love a thing, you still have to get some financial stability, and I think we need to probably change some things on a systems level, right, to get to get to that point. I don't know what it's gonna be. Like, maybe it's access to loans or maybe it's healthcare for farmers or maybe it's climate change policy, right?

ALEX:  All of those things?

LIZ:  All of those things. But today, we're not gonna dig into the big stuff. We're gonna hear stories from Indiana farmers talking about how they're making it work.

INDIANA FARMER #1:  My wife and I both do have full-time jobs as well, so we, [LAUGHS] farm full-time, but we also have other jobs, too. [LAUGHS] Yeah. And one time I did have the desire for this to be full-time. My dad passed away in February of 2017, and the tax business that I own is with his business partner. So, when he passed away, I kinda jumped into that role and really quickly, from maybe not the true desire, but a familial, financial responsibility standpoint, it made sense for me to stick with the tax business, but then also put some more drive and effort into making the farming and the tax business work together versus, "Oh, I can only do one or the other."

INDIANA FARMER #2:  At the moment, we're still a new business, we're still growing. So, yes, absolutely we're having to fund it through off-farm jobs. So, Armando works part-time, I work full-time.

INDIANA FARMER #3:  Presently, [LAUGHS] I work so I can farm, [LAUGHS] and that's okay, but I do wanna make farming my full-time job. And of course, like, that's gonna require a lot of hustle on my part, but it's also going to mean that I need to diversity, and that's right back into that problem of monoculture. The thing that's so great about a market farm or farming on a small scale is that if something terrible happens and one of my crops fails, it's not the end of the world because I'm not relying on one single crop to feed my family. I'm relying on a large variety of fruits, vegetables, berries, you know, nuts, [LAUGHS] eggs, the whole shebang.

INDIANA FARMER #4:  We own a construction company together, and we both work there. We build grain storage and material handling equipment and stuff like that for conventional farmers. There's no plan long-term to leave that career behind. It was a company that was started in '93 by my father. Claire and I bought the company in 2016. It's a very successful company. We've got about 15 employees.

INDIANA FARMER #5:  Yeah. It's a great job for our family, and we have recognized to make a true living, we just don't have the economy of scale, I guess, at our advantage because we would need so much more land. Sure, perhaps one day we'd love more land and employees to help make that scale possible, but if it's maintained this size, too, I think we would still see it as successful, and we'd be happy.

INDIANA FARMER #4:  Mm-hmm.

INDIANA FARMER #5:  So.

INDIANA FARMER #6:  Now I am full-time. So, before, as a decision, I was traveling, playing concert, but lately it's been hard, very hard [LAUGHS] to find qualified people to come and work here. So, COVID came, and that's when I decided, well, I need to put myself 100% to this project in order to really make it happen, and that's what I've been doing and I think I will continue doing that way. I will probably stop working other [UNSURE OF WORD] and just be full-time farmer. [LAUGHS]

INDIANA FARMER #7:  We make a full-time living from this, and it's been a long journey to get here, but we love what we do and we wouldn't be doing anything else.

INDIANA FARMER #8:  I think that the biggest hurdle is the business aspect, at least for me. I mean, it took years just to develop that customer base, just for people even to know, "Oh, my neighbor's growing produce." You know, it takes years. It's kinda nuts how long it takes. I think that's just the hardest part, figuring out the business aspect and understanding all the costs associated with what you're doing. And you know, like, you have a bad planting or something, it's just like, once you figure out when you should terminate that thing and then just replant. Understanding how that affects your profits at the end of the year, I think that's tough.

INDIANA FARMER #9:  We have a CSA, vegetable CSA, and a farm stand, and some wholesale customers, but our primary focus is growing for the people who are our neighbors and who live right in our community.

INDIANA FARMER #10:  When I tell people I farm, there's an underlying assumption that I'm not making a good living at it and I probably have a job on the side, and so I like to just kinda quickly try to dispel that, not in a, like, bragging sort of way, but more like, "Yeah, I make a full-time living from farming." And then they assume probably that I farmed, you know, 5,000 acres, and I'm like, "Nope, we actually have, you know, an acre and-a-quarter under production," and their eyes kinda get big and they kinda wonder whether I'm lying, maybe, if I'm telling the truth. And I'm like, "Nope, you can come visit us and see us and check our website out." Yeah, that's, that's something I like to talk, especially with non-farming people, and farming people both ways. I think there's a perception that you can't make a good living and have a good life from it.

INDIANA FARMER #11:  Yeah, and I would say, like, we grow for our community, and I mean, any farmer is growing for a person or, you know, even an animal that eventually goes to a person. What I love about the small scale farming we do is that we literally see our customers day after day and week after week, and we have always said that our customers drive what we do. Like, we're gonna grow the way we grow using the methods we use, but if our customers eventually wanted to do something different than a CSA and they were asking for it and pushing for it, then we would move in that direction. So I very much see farming as a relational thing. It is growing food for people we know, who let us know what they like and what they don't like, and I really like that.

INDIANA FARMER #12:  I had planted a great deal of stuff in the ground in my greenhouses in 2019 in the, like, late fall, November, December time, and that stuff just all went off like crazy February, March, April, and so it was perfect. There was a huge shift to the online market and the delivery app site that I sell through, Market Wagon, and I had a bunch of supply ready for the demand, so that was really sweet. At the time I was kinda like, "Oh, I hope I can sell all of this," and it worked out really well.

INDIANA FARMER #13:  I just kinda thought, "Well, let's just treat it like we're selling t-shirts online," so we just tried to design the farm so that we kind of maintain inventory like we're just selling, you know, some sort of widget on the shelf versus, like, "Oh, you know, our cut-off time is this time, you have to order by then." We have cut- off times but we don't, like, shut the store down. We're just saying, you know, we can only deliver it or have it ready for on-farm pickup on these specific dates.

INDIANA FARMER #13:  I think it's more like trying to make it as easy for our customers as possible. There's just been a lot of changes with availability. Like, you can pick up your groceries at the Kroger. You just call a number and they bring it out to you. Amazon has same-day grocery delivery, and you know, we're always competing with that.

INDIANA FARMER #14:  In my previous life as a certified crop advisor among the conventional corn and bean guys, I think they understand and view us as, "Good for you. You found a niche market. You're a specialized truck patch farm." This area 30 years ago had lots of them: asparagus farms, onions. So that, there's a history there and people understand, number one, how much work it is and how little it pays or what a low margin business it is, which is the same as conventional row crops, right? So, I think people get that. So when they come and get a vegetable that's high quality and fresh, they really appreciate it. They really appreciate it. It's not just like, "Oh, this tastes good and I'm supporting local," but it's, I think, a deeper understanding.

INDIANA FARMER #15:  We had some friends that helped us out. I think they felt sorry for us more than [LAUGHS] anything else and thought we really needed some help, which was great, it was awesome and it helped us a lot. But I say "feel sorry for us" probably, like, more as a joke. You know, I think she enjoyed it, but I say "feel sorry" more from the standpoint is I don't think people really understand that if you're gonna put this level of work into something, like, you have to have a passion for it. I don't feel sorry for myself when I'm out working in the dog days of summer and it's so hot and, you know, everything's ripe and everything needs to be picked and everything needs to be washed. But I think a lot of people see that level of work as, you know, this overburden, and it can be, you know, and that's the drag. You know, we all hit a wall and things like that, but I just think when you start to see the scope of what the true work involves in making this work, probably what I really mean is they saw the value in what we were doing.

INDIANA FARMER #16:  I don't know, I think most people that continue to buy our stuff, they know us and they're just really happy to support us.

LIZ:  And there you have it, folks. This is the Hoosier Young Farmer Podcast brought to you with support from Indiana Humanities, the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition, and National Young Farmers Coalition. To learn more about how we're updating the narrative on food and farming in Indiana, go to hoosieryfc.org/stories. Thanks to the farmers who lent their voices to this episode. Juan Carlos [PHONETIC: Arango], Megan Ayers, Daniel Garcia, Micky Keaton, Anne Merit, Julian Dan Perkins, Ben Riggs, Christie Schultz, David Simms and Adam and Claire [PHONETIC: Troest]. Thanks to Andrew Raridonand Jessica Murnane for coordinating these interviews, and Andrew Raridon again as well as Rachel Brandenberg for conducting the interviews.

ALEX:  Our theme music is from Amy O, and we have additional music from Ramón Monràs-Sender and Airport People. Our host, Liz Brownlee, got this project off the ground, and it was produced by me, Alex Chambers. Thanks for listening.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And this is Earth Eats. You've been listening to an episode of the Hoosier Young Farmer Podcast. You can find links to the whole series and to the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition on our website, eartheats.org. That's it for our show this week. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Mark Chiller, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Josephine McRobbie, Daniella Richardson, Payton Whaley, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reid.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Special thanks this week to Beth Hoffman and to everyone at Island Press. To Alex Chambers, Liz Brownly and everyone involved with the Who's Your Young Farmer Podcast.

RENEE REID:  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artists at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.