“If you ate today, thank a farmer.” I purchased a small wooden sign a couple of years ago for my office with that quote. I was also recently given a larger wooden sign with the same quote that is sitting on my desk.
I thought of these signs this past weekend when I was forwarded a podcast from one of GreenStone’s directors. (I am writing this article in early September.) The podcast was hosted by Mike Rowe and his guest was Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is very unique. He grew up on a farm in California growing grapes. He then went to college and eventually received a PhD in classical studies from Stanford. While being a professor, writer, historian and sometimes a political commentator, he never really left the family farm. At age 71, he still lives on the farm.
I rarely listen to podcasts, but I found this one hour and 20 minute podcast very interesting. These two guys discussed the importance of farming, mining, other “muscle jobs” and “dirty jobs”. For Hanson, life at a university was much different than life on the farm, but he was never allowed to forget that his family members and other farmers were helping feed the world.
As a full-time student, one day he came home proud of how close he was to earning his degree and was telling his dad how well he was doing. His college educated dad then asked Hanson a simple question, in any of his classes did he ever learn how to wire a piece of equipment needed for the raisins so it wouldn’t burn up? On the farm, it didn’t matter how much he knew about classical studies. What mattered was wiring the equipment properly, driving the tractor without tearing out the vines, and having the skills to weld, perform rudimentary plumbing and trim trees. Hanson noted how hard it is to grow quality crops and the enormous intelligence and skill it takes to get those crops harvested and trucked to market.
Hanson and Rowe also discussed politics and the importance of having an administration that understands the impact of other countries subsidizing products and having them sold in the world market. Hanson gave an example of government subsidized grapes from Europe being dumped in the United States during the 1980s, driving the market price 70% lower from the prior year and the devastation that event caused to his family and the neighbors’ surrounding farms.
I could go on and on regarding the content of the podcast. However, without Hanson or Rowe saying it, I knew I should be Thanking a Farmer. So…
- Thank you for teaching your children the importance of “muscle jobs” like farming, welding, plumbing and how to maintain equipment.
- Thank you for keeping your land for production agricultural use.
- Thank you for expanding your beef and hog production.
- Thank you for expanding and maintaining your dairies.
- Thank you for repopulating your poultry facilities after a virus-driven de-population.
- Thank you for all the products your farm produces.
- Thank you for inspiring your children to take on the family business.
- Thank you for being a member of our Farm Credit cooperative.
- Thank you for feeding me, my family and the rest of the world.
The podcast also reminded me of how important our upcoming election and our future elections are. We need an administration, Congress, governor and state legislature that truly supports agriculture in Washington, D.C., Michigan, and Wisconsin. We need elected officials that will promote less regulation, low fuel costs and low electrical costs. These same individuals need to understand economics to the point that overspending by the government causes devastating inflation and huge debt burden. We need a secure border, and we need our ag products promoted on the world markets while being protected from heavily subsidized products from other countries.
GreenStone and Farm Credit continue to be a voice supporting agriculture in D.C., Madison and Lansing. Let’s make sure we elect individuals that will listen, lead and act all of the time, not just some of the time. Farmers work every day to make sure we are fed, and our elected representatives should perform accordingly to support this critical industry.
Your association continues to perform very well. From a financial perspective, we are one of the top performing Farm Credit associations in the country for the first six months of 2024. For instance, our return on assets is the highest within our AgriBank district and our operating rate (operating expenses divided by earning assets) is the lowest of any Farm Credit association. We continue to be very good stewards of your capital.
In addition, in July we received our customer satisfaction survey results. We are very pleased to report our numbers essentially matched last year’s outstanding results. 96% of our customers are “satisfied” and “very satisfied.” 74% of our customers were “very satisfied.” That result matches last year’s high for GreenStone. Thank you to those of you who took our annual random survey and thank you for the ratings!
These results don’t happen by accident, however. We wouldn’t have very satisfied customers if our employees didn’t follow our CoreFour values, every day. I want to thank my teammates again for their outstanding service to our customers and to each other!
Good luck during your harvest this fall. As always, please be safe. We are all praying for cooperative weather and excellent yields.
Please feel free to reach out to me any time if I can ever be of assistance. Thank you again for your membership and business!
To view the fall 2024 issue of Partners magazine in its entirety, click here.
