130 years after my great-great-grandfather first got this land, we’re still taking care of it, like my grandfather taught me. And so we still got it. We still holding on to it four generations later. With my daughter, it’ll be the fifth. My granddaughter will be the sixth.
The biggest problem they’re gonna have staying in the farming business is subdivisions. It’ll be all the way around it. You know, when a farmer dies and the children don’t want to farm, then a realtor buys it up to build houses on it.
But my great-grandfather would be proud cause the farm is still supporting the family. He would be tickled to death probably. Even my mom, who didn’t want me farming, probably would have been. And many people in the community making money off of it.
Ben poses with his granddaughter, who holds a mini-farm tool and wears a
t-shirt that proudly proclaims: “To farm is to touch a life forever.”
We live in a country where we’re used to — I don’t wanna say cheap food — but we’re not used to paying much of our income like the Europeans and other parts of the world. People don’t wanna pay the real cost, you know?
Farmers see these changes happening. Sometimes even professors and universities, they discount us as not knowing but, in reality, we know. It’s for real. And we’re gonna have to deal with it. We’re gonna have to learn how to cut down on carbon emissions. Gotta learn how to use wind power, solar power. We got to better manage water, ’cause we take it for granted in Mississippi but it’s not finite. We might think it is but it ain’t.
We’re gonna have to learn how to do it more sustainable. I think us farmers got it. The average person has got to really understand the culture of food. We take it for granted in this country, you know? We always know it’s gonna be there, but that ain’t a given.
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