Latest / Conservation Stories / Parity, Not Charity: The Forgotten Farmer Protests of the 1970s

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Parity, Not Charity: The Forgotten Farmer Protests of the 1970s · Conservation Stories

• 0:08
  Speaker A: Hello, friends. This is Tillery Timmons Sims, your host for another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast that's brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research association, or Sarah, as most of you know us as. And we are excited today to have Lee Lancaster join us because we are going to have a conversation about something that I have been curious about for a long time. And this is some things that happened in the 70s and 80s that I remember from my childhood being on the farm. It was an ag movement and my dad was involved in it. And I remember taking my dad to the airport, which was a big deal in the 70s, and I remember him being gone. And I knew what was happening, understood what was happening, but I never really knew what what was the outcome. And so recently I discovered that the folks that were part of this movement actually meet in Lubbock for reunion. And it was at this movement that I met Lee. And so, Lee, thank you for being here to help update and educate me and all of our friends here on the American agricultural movement.
• 1:31
  Speaker B: Thank you for asking. I hope, I hope I can fill in all the blanks, or at least most of them.
• 1:36
  Speaker A: So, as you can tell, Lee is not from Texas. So he has written a book on the history of Georgia, correct?
• 1:48
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:48
  Speaker A: Yes. That's why I was like, wasn't I Georgia and its involvement in the American agricultural movement and hoping one day to write one about Texas because there's some really great folks. I met some great folks at that meeting that were involved during that time. So, Lee, how in the world did you find out about this movement and what really was it?
• 2:15
  Speaker B: Well, it was in 2022. You remember, we had the Ottawa trucker strike and they didn't want to take the COVID shot. And it spilled over into the US and there was a truck convoy that it made its way to the Beltway and it Washington, and they did not allow them on onto the streets of Washington. And we really don't know what happened to that truck convoy. And one of the commentators said it's like it could end up like the tractors did when they came to Washington. And I work with the Georgia Department of Agriculture and I'm contributing, I'm a contributing writer to the Market Bulletin. And I was talking to the editor about what I had heard and she told me to, to do some research on it to see if we could come up with something. And just so happened, my daddy went to Atlanta in 1977 to the farmers rally, which was the real big thing back in 77. And everybody was there anybody that was over 14 years old that was a farmer drove to Atlanta and drove around the capital and nobody just, nobody talks about it anymore. So it was not that hard to find people that were involved. And once you got them going, they, they contributed gladly to the situation. For former Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black was good friends with a man from Unadilla and I called him and he called. He, he gave me 25 or 30 people to talk to and really helped me out. And we uncovered a lot of, a lot of folks that were still around, still in the agriculture heavy and involved in, in the organizations. And I ended up buying a book off of thrift Books called From the White House to the who Scowl. And that book was written by Gerald McCathern. And Gerald McCathern is the man that his hologram is inside the tractor. That tractor over at, at the Fire Max in lubbock. Absolutely. Gerald McCathern wrote that book. That book ended on April 5th of 1978. And I was born on April 18th, 1978.
• 5:10
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 5:11
  Speaker B: And so obviously I didn't have any recollection of it, but Daryl McCather and also wrote a book called Gentle Rebels that I found later. And it star, it picked up where that ended up and it carried them on into what we know as the tractor Cade to D.C. and there were a lot of farmers named in those books and a lot of them were still around and a lot of them I knew it was just amazing. And I love talking to these folks and, and you get a, a recording device like this. I learned how to record people. I learned how to interview people, I learned how to hush and let them talk and I learned how to dictate and stuff like that. And, and it went from there and it, I'm telling you, it's, it's just something.
• 6:04
  Speaker A: Did you have any intention of writing a book? The beginning of all this, When I
• 6:09
  Speaker B: talked to Terrell Hudson, I was right near all my information down on a Georgia Power envelope envelope. And I was writing it all down and that's where it all went. And, and I talked to these folks and I was recording the, the conversations that we were having. And like I said, I had the intention of writing about a 1400 word, 1500 word article for the Market Bulletin. So no, I wasn't intent, I was not intending on writing a book at that point. But then once April and May came and the, the article came out in June, I got in touch with a couple of publishers and one of them I'm still using to this day. And they, they came up with, they, they were excited about it. And they, they, they told me, they said, yeah, we want to do this thing. Here's a. You, you need to do your bibliography. So it took almost as long to do the bibliography as it did to do the, the book because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to cite sources and things like that. So it was a learning curve for real.
• 7:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I bet that's the truth. I'd have issues with that too. Chat GPT. I'm looking at you. So.
• 7:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know what that is.
• 7:39
  Speaker A: AI so, yeah, so I remember seeing a couple of years ago in, maybe even more than that, seeing that in the fiber. In the fiber Max museum going. And it just kind of stopped me in my tracks because I hadn't thought about it in years. And I, and when I did think about it, I had vivid memories of, of, of that movement. And, but I didn't know that. I don't guess I had thought about like, oh, this is important time in history. And we need to, we need to make sure that we're acknowledging and keeping up, keeping all of this information together, you know, for the next generation. And so can you give us a little bit of background about like, where it started and why?
• 8:34
  Speaker B: Well, the, the national movement started in Campo, Colorado, which is right across the border from the, I reckon the Oklahoma Panhandle.
• 8:45
  Speaker A: Huh. Okay.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: I, I really don't know what the panhandle of Texas is. I think that's where I, I reckon that's where Amarillo is. And so anyway, it's over the cross of, across the border from there and New Mexico is in that Four Corners.
• 9:02
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:03
  Speaker B: Area area. And they, there were five farmers that got together in Campo and then they started talking and it spread from there and they, they had a huge demonstration when the USDA came to Pueblo, Colorado.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Hold on just a minute. Hold on. Oh, thank you. Sorry, we'll have to edit that out. Sorry. I was touching my necklace and it was making noise into the microphone. So there were five men. Let's start right back there. There were five men.
• 9:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, there were, there were five farmers that met in a cafe, though I think it was in Campo, Colorado. And, and they got together and they found out that the USDA secretary was going to be in Pueblo, Colorado a few days later. And so all the tractors from that, that four state area, Kansas as well, they all drove to Pueblo and confronted the USDA secretary there. I think that was in September, maybe the 6th or you know, somewhere in there.
• 10:21
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: And then that's when they started organizing the farmers made contact with the farmers that knew Jimmy Carter over here in Georgia, some of the guys from Kansas that just happened to be a city in Kansas called Plains, Kansas. And the farmers from Kansas. Plains, Kansas, called some of the farmers in Plains, Georgia. And the farmer that they called, he was kind of pretty close with Jimmy Carter. And he just said, I'm really good friends with Jimmy Carter, but I'll give you a contact with a. With a fella that you may want to talk to. And. And it ended up getting with the farmers that. That were organized.
• 11:08
  Speaker A: So what amazes me about this is this was before the Internet. I mean, I. Yeah, I mean, like, I. Right. It is not like. I mean, I. And I do. I'm a landman by trade, and so, I mean, I'm always finding people, looking for people in that part of my life, and I cannot even imagine functioning without the Internet trying to find people.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, they. They had a phone tree. You know, you'd call this person.
• 11:37
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 11:38
  Speaker B: And, you know, we. We call that the prayer list now.
• 11:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: That was what they ended up doing. And.
• 11:47
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 11:47
  Speaker B: Like, I know one there in Georgia. You had two Tommies. You had. Tommy Kersey is, I think, the one that. That they contacted in Kansas. And then there was Tommy Carter, who ended up just through the grapevine, hearing about the. The movement. And he actually went to the airport, Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, and met with some of the agriculture movement folks. They flew in.
• 12:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 12:17
  Speaker B: To Atlanta, and he met them, and that was the beginnings of the movement there. And he took. He went back to Alma, and they. They drove to the courthouse in Alma. Then they ended up at the Statesboro courthouse, and then they ended up in Plains the day after Thanksgiving in 77. And Jimmy Carter found out about it, and he went to Camp David instead of coming home to planes. And so they figured, we need to. Annie a little bit. So they ended up in Atlanta at the Capitol. And you had a demonstration in Tallahassee and Columbia, South Carolina, Dothan, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, places like that. And that was December 10th.
• 13:09
  Speaker A: So give us a little bit of the why. Like, what. What was the problem? I mean, and. And I. We can kind of discuss this a little bit later, but. And I was kind of thinking it might have been you that told me about the podcast with John Kemp and Michael McNeil. Was that you? Maybe someone else? Because it doesn't look like on your face that it was you.
• 13:35
  Speaker B: So I'm not a good Poker player.
• 13:40
  Speaker A: So. But he references Michael McNeil, was someone who was working. They basically brought him in to the USDA during that 80s crisis to try to fix things. And he references a document that came out in the 50s, 50s from USDA saying basically we have too many farmers and here's what we could do probably that would help to maybe cut down on how many farmers we have. And. But they didn't know how they got the train started and didn't know how to stop it. So technically we think of it as this is what Jimmy Carter did, but I think he inherited the problem too.
• 14:23
  Speaker B: There you, you were probably in the meeting the other day when they referenced Earl Butts.
• 14:31
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 14:33
  Speaker B: And he pretty much.
• 14:34
  Speaker A: Yes, yes.
• 14:35
  Speaker B: Told everybody that, you know, you need to buy a 450 crawler and tear down all of the trees and fence post defense posts. We're gonna feed the world. I never, I spent a couple of days trying to find that quote and I never could find it. And I went back to, you know, the early days of the Nixon administration. Never could. And that was pretty much where everybody, we, they, they invented larger tractors, over 100 horsepower, which is nothing nowadays, obviously. But you went from people who remembered plowing with a mule to being able to plow with a 150 horsepower tractor and do whatever they wanted to and they could grow as much as they wanted to. There was no, no, no, no rails at all, you know, no stops of that. And so you had an overabundance of the storage crops that we had. And the USDA had the farm bill and the insurance price for the loan price for, for the grain, soybeans, wheat and corn. They were about 40% of what we had in them to grow them.
• 15:54
  Speaker A: That sounds familiar.
• 15:56
  Speaker B: And so if I'm a grain trader, I'm not going to give you anything higher than what the loan value.
• 16:06
  Speaker A: Right.
• 16:06
  Speaker B: Because I don't have to.
• 16:07
  Speaker A: Right.
• 16:08
  Speaker B: And that's pretty much what ended up with the people out in campo days. Like, do you see what this, this farm bill is looking like? And, and you know, both houses of Congress were, were Democrat, and you had a Democrat president, so whatever Jimmy Carter
• 16:26
  Speaker A: wanted, he was going to sell through.
• 16:29
  Speaker B: So that's what that's what you ended up with. And the farmers were like, we got to do something. And so the only way they were going to get anybody's attention was, you know, with the tractor cage and stuff like that. And you still had, you know, a lot more farmers. You had way more farmers than you have now.
• 16:47
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 16:48
  Speaker B: You probably had a Hundred times as many farmers back in that day than you do now, so.
• 16:54
  Speaker A: Exactly. And a lot of them were smaller because, I mean, I think I, I heard someone give statistics the other day about like how 80% of production agriculture is on. It isn't on.230, 000 farmers for 80% of agriculture. So yeah, it's a, it's an issue. But it's interesting to me that like, we're really dealing with the same thing. It's like, I am negative this much money when I produce this commodity. I am negative this much money when I produce this commodity. You know, crazy. So what, what, what were they wanting the government to do? Because I always hear we don't really want a handout. We don't want to hand out. We just want, we just want to have fair prices. So. Because the, the government was setting those loan prices. So explain that a little bit. And, and so just so you'll know, like the audience probably does is not like from. When we talk about loan prices, you and I are talking the same language, but to other people. You're like, what? I know what you're talking about. So explain that piece.
• 18:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, they, the farmers were not wanting charity. They were wanting parody.
• 18:10
  Speaker A: Yes, there you go.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: And every time I talk to somebody when I have something made like a shirt or a book or something, people are like, did you misspell party? Because I've never heard of parody.
• 18:23
  Speaker A: Because they never. Yeah, it's not a word we use anymore.
• 18:26
  Speaker B: And we're even using parody in the WNBA now, you know, and the, in the major league baseball nil with the, with the NCAA stuff.
• 18:37
  Speaker A: That's interesting.
• 18:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, but parody is basically even fairness.
• 18:43
  Speaker A: Fairness.
• 18:44
  Speaker B: Parody is fairness. And the problem that they had was you're your grains, your crops are traded on a board in Chicago, a board of trade and stuff like that. And so you really don't. There are people that set your price, that never put their hands on that crop. And that's what they were wanting somehow to have the system where instead of it being a world market, set the price. They were wanting the u. S. Government to say, this is the, this is where it is right now. They want it up here. And we had parity. We, they still use parity to set the milk prices. It's in the, in the USDA marketing order for that. So people are like, what's, what's the problem? How come we can't get, uh, parity for everything else? And so there's a formula, you've heard the, the consumer price index well, there's also a producer's price index and it tells you what everything costs to produce down to the acre. And that's how they could figure out that that's where 40 comes from. And then parity has a small modest profit involved with it. I'm not talking about doubling the price of it right into it but. And they really wanted parody to combat poverty and, and bankruptcy. And the government instead of doing that said, and this is probably going to be familiar even now because I looked at one of our farmers last week during the meeting, they were talking about this and I looked at him and I said they ain't learned a thing in 40 years. They want to give you a loan.
• 20:39
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:39
  Speaker B: Of small 1 2% loan, 40 year loans on some of this stuff. But if you're making 40% of what it costs to produce, you're losing.
• 20:52
  Speaker A: Well let's say it like this. If you're losing 60% of everything you spend, I mean like you don't get paid back for 60%.
• 21:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:03
  Speaker A: It's insane. Yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker B: And then they're going to loan you some money. So you're going to end up with four or five years. And some of those farmers ended up with three quarters to a million dollars in debt because those farms were just not making anything because that drug on for three or four years and they're
• 21:25
  Speaker A: in debt to the federal government. And now I think it's, I can't remember what percentage. I just, just left my mind of all of ag. Ag debt, land debt is in the federal government system, lending system. But just think, I think it's over half. Over half is what it is. I'm like, man, if they called the notes then the federal government can own. Is. Is the federal government that would own half of the farmland in the United States? I don't know.
• 21:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of what a lot of the farmers were thinking though is I got this money from the government and so I'm just not going to pay it back. What they going to do? Well, a lot of that, A lot of those. Well most of those loans were underwritten by yeah. The, the insurance companies. The folks Met Life or New York Life, those kind of things are the names that come up. So just because the government can print money, most of the time when you get a loan from the federal government, it's brokered through a private firm.
• 22:28
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
• 22:28
  Speaker B: And you owe the bank that private firm. And that's one thing that a lot of folks just didn't understand. And so when they started losing their farms it wasn't the federal government that was on.
• 22:43
  Speaker A: It was their neighbor or the guy that's sitting in the pew next to him at church.
• 22:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. And a lot of the farms, like I said, went under because Georgia and Louisiana during that period of time, in 81 and 82, 75% of the farmers were. Were in danger of bankruptcy back in those days. And that's why they called it the farming crisis.
• 23:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, 75%. That's amazing. So what does this all have to do with farm aid? Because it does have something to do with farm aid.
• 23:21
  Speaker B: There was a guy the other day, his name was David center, and he's from Texas, and he drove a tractor from Texas all the way to Washington, D.C. in 1979, met with the farmers over in Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, went right up the interstate, and he met with a guy named Willie Nelson. And John. They called him John Cougar Mellencamp at the time. Now he's John Mellencamp.
• 23:54
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 23:55
  Speaker B: And all of those guys, and they started fundraising in 1985. They went to the University of Illinois football stadium and had the first Farm Aid. And so one of our farmers, that. The president of the American agriculture movement is also the. One of the founders of Farm aid. And that was in 1985, one of the darkest moments in agriculture in 1984, 3, 4, 5, and 6, during that period of time. So that's. That's the connection between Farm aid and the American agriculture movement. And every year I watch it, it's on television. And David Sinner is always on there, and he's always got that American agriculture movement hat on whenever he's. When he's on there, when they interview him.
• 24:49
  Speaker A: So. And it. How did it come to. I guess people were hearing about it on the news was. It was of. I guess it was national news because people were in every state, were. Pretty much every state were participating in some way. Isn't that correct?
• 25:06
  Speaker B: Most of the. You had some. Some spots where it was a lot more involvement. I've seen most every state, you know, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, those folks. And then you. And you had the Georgia people. Those were your big. You had some very, very strong leadership in those in those states that were able to organize and keep things going for several years.
• 25:42
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 25:43
  Speaker B: And so. And those just happen to be your strong agricultural states. And some of the commodities were a lot more represented. They were in a lot more hurt than some of the others. You know, peanuts for us was. Was. Has always had a. A quota system with it. And so peanut farming was not really right under the bus, so to speak.
• 26:13
  Speaker A: Well, in, and the, and to that point, going back to what you said earlier, there was, we were overproducing, we were growing too much, we flooded the market. And that's the reason peanuts weren't flooding the market is because you couldn't just, if you wanted to participate, you could, you couldn't just buy, you couldn't just put as many, grow as many peanuts as you wanted. They were under a system that, where the government was regulating, keeping track of the market demand so that you didn't flood the market.
• 26:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, you, you got used to have the ASCS office, which was Ag Stabilization and Conservation.
• 26:59
  Speaker A: That was, now it's called FSA Farm Service Agency Ag Stabilization. Yeah. So I mean, I think that, so you're, what you're referencing to peanuts is the reason why. But then when that system ended, that's what brought, that's when we started growing peanuts in Texas. And where, where I am now, you
• 27:18
  Speaker B: know, yeah, they, they, they, they went from the, the quota system to the base system and like I said, that's what saved a lot of our folks. And, and so corn, you could, you could grow whatever you wanted to and that's what ended up getting a lot of people in a lot of trouble.
• 27:36
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:37
  Speaker B: But nowadays, before you even buy the seed, you've got a contract. Cotton, you got a contract for Vidalia Onions, you've got a contract for the peanuts. You know, all, all, all of your crops. If, if you don't have a contract, you're going to learn because you're a high stakes gambler if you don't have somewhere to go with that crop even before you put it in the ground nowadays, God forbid you have a, a hurricane like Michael that, that hit us several years ago, right? The fires that we're having in Texas, that we seem to have several of them, you know, and those kinds of things, even, even with those that happen, there's nothing we can do about those, but we can control a little bit of the risk. And so like I said, that's what you need to do is just plan ahead before you even buy the seed.
• 28:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and it's, it is hard to know. I mean, I know that I don't know very many farmers that aren't, you know, that are brokering their own, you know, selling their own commodities that some people do do that. And I don't know very many of them that they seem to be pretty smart people, you know, they know what they're doing. I would Scare me to. But so they wanted, they just wanted a fair price. But how, you know, I just wonder how much of what we're in, the position that we're in now is replicating some of these things in the past because we, it hasn't been the government saying, grow more, grow more, grow more. But we definitely farmers have been told, oh, the population is going to double and we need to have be. Be growing more. And so maybe instead of more acres, we're growing, you know, for more yield per acre, you know. And now I think the last information I read even like from the UN is, I mean, there it's about population is about to level out and then will decline and that population will increase, that population will age. And as people age, they eat less, you know, and so I don't know how much, I mean, all of these world dynamics impact. What are. And that's the thing is everybody's like, well, we're competing with all over the world and other countries are helping their farmers so that they can get a fair price. And it feels like we aren't getting that help here.
• 30:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, just it, the, the problem has been the, the voice of the farmer has gotten smaller and, and other people's voices have gotten louder. It just seems like you watch some of the news and it just doesn't make, it doesn't mean anything to me. A lot of the things that they're talking about. And so like I said, you got people that are fighting over crumbs. And like I said, the bread's going to waste, the farms have to, you have to go. And that's one of the things that they really had let go of in the 70s. A lot of their voice had been taken away from them, and so they had to claw that back. And what you, you know, you was talking about your daddy going to the airport.
• 31:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. He went to fly, fly out to
• 31:06
  Speaker B: D.C. those, a lot of the farmers went to D.C. but a lot of farmers went to areas of the country to talk to farmers. You know, they leave, leave Georgia and go to talk in Kansas and Missouri
• 31:20
  Speaker A: and because you just weren't, you couldn't do what we're doing right now.
• 31:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. And, and a lot of the farmers just thought that they, they didn't have a voice and they weren't going to be able to accomplish anything. And then I know that one of the farmers that I talked to went to a place called Boneville, Mississippi, and I went through Boneville, Mississippi the other day.
• 31:42
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 31:43
  Speaker B: I don't know where that is over there. Around Corinth, I think. And so like I said, the farmers got together and, and talked to other farmers and instead of having the Internet, they met and that's what they had to do. And just so you know, you got your, you had your, your crop dusters back in those days and those farmers also. Crop dusters also had aircraft that they had their, the ability to, to get their hands off.
• 32:11
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker B: And so they could go out and they could go all over the country with, and they utilize those aircraft and to meet with other folks. And that's how it really picked up in these small areas, you know, where the, where the farmers were. So yeah, that was. But yeah, I, I talked to a guy the other day. He, he. He was in the USDA and he's the one that came up with some, with the, the program where the USDA would buy your would, would give you a loan. Give you the loan value on your crop and they set the price. This was in the early 80s. And, and they would for that crop up to a certain point and if they sold that crop for higher than that, you got the rest of it too. Basically, the USDA was loaning. Loaning you the money. And he called me and I talked to him a pretty good while. And I'm going to tell you right now, I hate. I slept through economics a day back because the things that he was telling me about just went like this. Talking about the early 80s and he, he, he knows he's still around and he knows more about this economic situation that we were in. And he, like I said, he was in the USDA when a farmer came in and, and they shut the doors on him one night. They left them in there and in Washington in 78.
• 33:48
  Speaker A: And they left the farmers inside. They locked them inside.
• 33:51
  Speaker B: They locked them inside. They, they went to meet with the unannounced the Secretary of Ag. And he, he slipped out the back door. He jumped. No, he jumped out the window and, and they hey, you looking for. We're here to see the secretary. Well, he's. Oh, he's not here right now. Well, we'll be here when he gets back. And they said well, how can we reach you? He said I'm. I'll be right here. They're like, no, when are you coming back? I will be right here. They never left the building until these USDA secretary came back the next morning. They stayed in the building. They had a sit in.
• 34:36
  Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: And one of the, the main instigator, the, the main. The guy that that was in charge of that deal was from Alamo, Georgia. And I knew him personally and. But he had. Obviously, this was before I was born. And so that, like I said, it was very special when you start putting things together and seeing these farmers that you knew your whole life. But they never did talk about this kind of stuff. And like I said, I just didn't ever understand why nobody talked about it anymore, because. But, yeah, I talked to this one and that one, and I said, did you. Have you ever talked to him about this kind of stuff? And they never did. They didn't ever talk about this stuff after I started.
• 35:17
  Speaker A: So. So let's talk about outcomes. So one of the cool things that David told me was about Farm Aid, you know, like, say, well, what can we really do? What can we really do? And which, by the way, Farm Aid gives. You know, I've heard people say, well, they don't. What do they even do? Where's the money go? Money goes to organizations that help farmers. And so they don't give it out to individual farmers. That's not the way it works. It goes to organizations to support farmers, and you can look on their website and it tells you all the places that that money's going. So. But he said that what they came up with was the need to get all of these farmers together, Representatives from all these regions need to come together. And so is that. Do you know a lot about that piece of it, the. What they called the Farm and Ranch Congress?
• 36:22
  Speaker B: I had never. I had never heard that part. You know, I just. I don't know when that came about, but I didn't really come into that in my ref. You know, in any of my research.
• 36:33
  Speaker A: So that I. I think that that was, if I understand correctly, that I've. That was in the 80s because they. David said that they. And I need to have David on the podcast so it can be like direct source and not through an ADA add brain. So they. Farm Aid paid for one farmer to come to St. Louis from every ag county in the United States that wanted to send one. So people got together in their chapters and decided who would go as a representative. And they all came there, and I think there were 800. And he said that they. They told them, everybody's here wearing your Farm Bureau cap or, you know, whatever organization, your co op or whatever you're representing, and whatever. We'd ask you to take those caps off. And they gave everybody a cap that was white with red letters and it said Farm and Ranch Congress. And we want you to Put this on because we need you to not. We need you to collaborate and be willing to think of the good of everyone and not just, you know, one organization or one area. And so they split them up and I think he said, into maybe three or four different working groups. And that is how we came. That is how the. They called it. The buyout, I think, is what they called it. I looked all that up the other day. But add. It was basically where they would write down your note. They would write off right off your note. So all these people that had all this debt, which is interesting to me now because I'm like, everybody's still in the same place, you know, because there was no system systematic change. So, you know, everybody just kind of like clean slate now, start over. But he, he was very actively involved in that. And so were like the law students here at Tech. There's a family that I am definitely going to be interviewing him. And they were in Happy, Texas, which is just north of here. And he was very involved. Like it was because it was like this much paperwork, you know, so it wasn't easy to do. And they didn't really make it easy. And they didn't make it where actually, you know, that people even knew about it, you know, so it was on the farmers to tell each other that they could do this, you know, and. Because I'm sure it just added a whole bunch more work to people who were already worked and, you know, overworked and that kind of stuff. But once, you know, the farmers figured out how to do it, how to fill out that paperwork, then they can more easily help each other fill out the paperwork. But I, if I remember correctly, I believe my parents may have even come up to Lubbock and someone helped them, maybe even. I feel like there was like a group of law students from Texas Tech that put together some kind of group and then that group actually helped to craft some of the, some of that process. And so they were able to help farmers a little bit more too. But not very many people were really. There weren't as many people that took advantage of it. And then what David and I looked up because he was like, I think that Bill's. I mean, I think that's still there. Well, it's, it's actually not a write down thing anymore. I mean write off thing. It's a re. Structuring. All they'll do now is just restructure and keep people in debt. Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker B: Yes. It's the same losses. It just seems like and, and no gains. You Know.
• 40:45
  Speaker A: Right.
• 40:45
  Speaker B: And it just seems like everybody's added a couple zeros, you know.
• 40:49
  Speaker A: That's exactly right. Right. Yeah.
• 40:51
  Speaker B: A lot of, a lot of the folks that I've talked to said there's no way that we could operate with 21 and a half percent interest compared to what we had back in the 70s and 80s. But just the other day they were talking about 2.7% inflation in January. That's, what is that, 32% if you multiply it by 12, you know, so that's not good, you know, and that's what we were worried with back in the 70s and 80s. So we're still having to put up with all these things, you know, still the, the calendars change, but the problem's still there.
• 41:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it really is. Fundamentally we still have an issue and I think for people to just understand what it would be like. It's if you owned a store and every person knew what you paid for the price that was on there was the price that you paid and it didn't include any markup to take in, paying for your electricity, paying for your staff, none of that. It was just the sticker price of what you paid for it. And they could go next door and buy the same thing. And they have. So you are the price taker. You take what's offered. You aren't the priced setter, you know, and so you can then understand like, hey, if I'm, if I'm selling something and I have zero profit and in fact, because they can go next door and they can say, well, I'll go next door, you sell it to me for 75% or 40%, 40% of what you have, you know, it listed at. And then if you don't, I'll just go next door to them. I'll just go somewhere else because we are competing globally. And I will tell you at the, the same, I was visiting with, at some Polish exchange farmers here and we were in a local farm store and looking up grain. Okay, so how much grain in particular? Wheat. So first of all, their production is like way more than ours. You know, they're growing lots more bushels per acre. But also their price was almost double what ours was, what they were going to get, you know, and the eu, they invest in their farmers by giving them, you know, grants to pay for half of their equipment or you need to put in storage. Well, we'll, I mean that's a lot of paperwork. Yes, you can fill out a lot of paperwork, but like we'll give you Money to half. We'll pay for half of it. You know, and then it's not this. I mean, I think they're probably. Maybe there are loan problem programs, I don't know. But I'm. You know, it's hard to compete.
• 43:53
  Speaker B: You know, a lot of the. A lot of the farm. Well over there in Poland, I'm keeping up with them, and I. I cannot imagine being in the United States and having a. A war right next door to us with the possibility of it spilling over overnight. You know, I don't see how you can operate a farm with, you know, some of my. Some of our crops are 140, 150 days to. To mature, and then you got cattle. You know, you got to get out on the road with them and things like that. You know, you scared that a. A drone or something's gonna attack or you're gonna hit a mine. I saw a farm that was trying to grow that was trying to do something over in Ukraine, and they had run a mine sweeper over the field before they could do anything.
• 44:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, people will refer to Poland as the Texas of Europe. And Polish people are very resilient, and they have fought in every single global war for freedom. They came and they came to the text to Texas and fought in the Texas revolution. You know, I mean, they are lovers of freedom and. And they have resisted in very unique ways and over. Over the years, but they are also investing in. In their defense. They know it, you know, that they. It's not a joke to them. It's. It's very serious, the threat that is right next door. They know. I mean, people want Poland and I know why. I've been there. I want it, too.
• 45:31
  Speaker B: Never mind Greenland, because they. The polls know what suppression.
• 45:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 45:39
  Speaker B: Is. You know, they've been 1940, you know, overnight, basically, it's what, eight days. They went from freedom to tyranny. And so they. They know better than we do. You know, we. We saw across the ocean, but the Poles know what it's like when you. When you lose. And that's the reason why they. They do what they do.
• 46:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, this has been great, and. And we've kind of just kind of scratched the surface, and I'm sure we probably left some people scratching their heads going, I don't know what you're about talking. Talking about, but I've enjoyed it and I've learned a lot, and I. I'm going to continue to learn about this movement and the moment in time and what we can learn from the past that we can take into this moment in time and learn some lessons from. And we have your, your information on your book, where they can get your book, which I have a copy of and actually going to the mountains next week and bringing it with me. So I have a couple of different books to finish and that is one of them. So I will put all the links and all of the socials and all that stuff so people can find out more about it.
• 46:54
  Speaker B: I appreciate it and I have enjoyed talking with y'.
• 46:57
  Speaker A: All.
• 46:57
  Speaker B: I appreciate the invite and anytime we get to talk to folks about the farmer strike, it's it, it's wonderful because like I said, it's, it's a, it's, it has been so interesting me for the last four years and it's never ceased to, to supply me with amazement every time that I make a new discovery about this stuff.
• 47:15
  Speaker A: You know, I'm so glad you're doing it. We need to be keeping, we need to be keeping all this information and passing it down to the next generation. It's really valuable. Thanks, Lee. Appreciate it.
• 47:29
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 47:30
  Speaker A: And thanks friends, for joining us for this episode of Conservation Stories. And I hope that you will take a moment to go check out Lee's website and support him. You purchase his book and learn more about the agricultural movement, American agricultural movement. And we hope that you will join us again. And if you found it interesting or you know somebody that was actually part of this movement, share this podcast with them and let them enjoy as well. Thanks.