As the coyotes howl their midnight sermons, I lie there staring into the darkness, wondering how we got here.
Two million farmers in this country, each convinced we’re carrying Moses’ staff.
Whether we're spreading synthetic fertilizer across 10,000 acres or hand-pulling weeds in a 2-acre organic garden, we all believe we've figured it out. It's like a Tower of Babel, but make it agriculture — everyone speaking different languages, while the land keeps taking our experiments like an old pickup with 300,000 miles on the clock.
Your line about "taking by force what you can have through love" hit me square in the teeth.
Because the truth is, most of us think we are farming with love.
My grandpa believed it too — chasing marginal land like salvation, convinced he was doing the Lord’s work by squeezing grain from ground that wanted to be prairie. He’d tell me, pride thick as August humidity, how landowners welcomed him with open arms. But those stories, like old fence posts, marked boundaries that don’t always point the way forward anymore.
The reality is messier than a pig pen after a spring rain.
Some of us preach soil health, while others worship yield monitors. We're all convinced our way is the highway to agricultural salvation, as if we each picked up different pieces of the same broken compass and decided our fragment points true north.
Before we can fix the food system, maybe we've got to learn to shut up and listen.
Not the listening where you're just waiting to explain why someone's wrong, but the kind where you admit maybe you don't have all the answers. The kind that makes you realize every generation before us thought they had it figured out, yet each had blind spots big enough to park a combine in.
What if real food security starts with some food system humility?
The kind that makes you willing to get down on your knees in the bean field — not just to pull plants, but to learn from the farmer next door, even if their methods make you want to spit nails.
Just thoughts from someone realizing we're all stumbling around in the dark, looking for the light switch, carrying different pieces of the same map.🌱
Adam, you're so spot on when you say it's "messier than a pig pen after a spring rain." 😂
I know you know this already... that farmers and growers think about these relationships all day long. But the other 99% of Americans... it's a vast unknown.
That's why it's so important to keep telling the stories you're telling and share the experiences, even if they can't "smell the rain."
Maybe we can encourage another 1% of our fellow Americans to get really curious about what carrot tops actually look like and how long it takes for a watermelon to grow and just how many acres it takes to make an actual living growing corn or soy.
Or maybe we can point to the migrant farm workers and ask our fellow Americans if they deserve the work conditions they get and just maybe, we can all value our food a little bit more because with that valuing of food we get to value each other a little more...
This is the shit that keeps me up at night.
As the coyotes howl their midnight sermons, I lie there staring into the darkness, wondering how we got here.
Two million farmers in this country, each convinced we’re carrying Moses’ staff.
Whether we're spreading synthetic fertilizer across 10,000 acres or hand-pulling weeds in a 2-acre organic garden, we all believe we've figured it out. It's like a Tower of Babel, but make it agriculture — everyone speaking different languages, while the land keeps taking our experiments like an old pickup with 300,000 miles on the clock.
Your line about "taking by force what you can have through love" hit me square in the teeth.
Because the truth is, most of us think we are farming with love.
My grandpa believed it too — chasing marginal land like salvation, convinced he was doing the Lord’s work by squeezing grain from ground that wanted to be prairie. He’d tell me, pride thick as August humidity, how landowners welcomed him with open arms. But those stories, like old fence posts, marked boundaries that don’t always point the way forward anymore.
The reality is messier than a pig pen after a spring rain.
Some of us preach soil health, while others worship yield monitors. We're all convinced our way is the highway to agricultural salvation, as if we each picked up different pieces of the same broken compass and decided our fragment points true north.
Before we can fix the food system, maybe we've got to learn to shut up and listen.
Not the listening where you're just waiting to explain why someone's wrong, but the kind where you admit maybe you don't have all the answers. The kind that makes you realize every generation before us thought they had it figured out, yet each had blind spots big enough to park a combine in.
What if real food security starts with some food system humility?
The kind that makes you willing to get down on your knees in the bean field — not just to pull plants, but to learn from the farmer next door, even if their methods make you want to spit nails.
Just thoughts from someone realizing we're all stumbling around in the dark, looking for the light switch, carrying different pieces of the same map.🌱
Adam, you're so spot on when you say it's "messier than a pig pen after a spring rain." 😂
I know you know this already... that farmers and growers think about these relationships all day long. But the other 99% of Americans... it's a vast unknown.
That's why it's so important to keep telling the stories you're telling and share the experiences, even if they can't "smell the rain."
Maybe we can encourage another 1% of our fellow Americans to get really curious about what carrot tops actually look like and how long it takes for a watermelon to grow and just how many acres it takes to make an actual living growing corn or soy.
Or maybe we can point to the migrant farm workers and ask our fellow Americans if they deserve the work conditions they get and just maybe, we can all value our food a little bit more because with that valuing of food we get to value each other a little more...
I'm grateful for this comment. 🙏
If what we’re doing makes even one person pause and think beyond a Joe Rogan quote or a poorly portrayed Hollywood movie, it’s worth every word.
You’re so right. There’s a disconnect between the field and the plate, and every story we share is another bridge built.
Grateful to have you in this conversation. Let’s keep planting those seeds. 🌱