It's Okay to Be A Small Farmer

so many of you probably saw um that we were running our 7720 again this year uh this is almost a 40 year old combine and it has seen many harvests many acres dad has had it since it was almost brand new it's a very used piece of equipment and we've received quite a few comments uh this year uh kind of making fun of this combine that was just really frustrating to read my dad loves this combine us three brothers we love this combine too just because it is not a brand new s-series combine does not mean it is not useful does not mean that it doesn't harvest a crop it is still very functional still does its job and it still has its place on our farm and you can laugh at it if you want but it is paid for and dollar for dollar this combine is worth its weight in gold and we enjoy running it um not only that but our sister laura got to spend most of the time in this combine and she had never um combined before and if we wouldn't have had this combine going i don't think laura would have been able to run the combine as much and this combine right here has taught all three brothers and our sister how to cut wheat dad's been able to teach all four of us siblings how to cut wheat with this old used combine and i think that's pretty cool now next i want to address um a comment that we received um on our facebook page during harvest this year um it's from someone named kevin drobot from i think it was northern alberta i think is where he's from i'm gonna read it here your little farm makes me laugh it's so cute how you are so small you don't even need a grain cart you only have three combines and you can only cut 300 acres in a day laugh out loud when you have 10 machines and you're harvesting 700 acres a day per machine and you run 24 hours straight for weeks then you can say you're a real farmer i know you aren't a successful farm because you can't afford to buy nicer equipment i am the number one producer in canada you are just a hobby farm that posts on facebook you have to sell merch and go speak places because you can't make enough money farming you would think after five generations you guys would have learned how to farm it's even funnier to me that you can grow two crops in one year but you still struggle where i am from where the big producers play we laugh at your tiny insignificant farm the world depends on my farm tiny kansas farms are a joke that was kevin drobot's comment and i ended up deleting that comment i think i responded to him once or twice and he said a few more very personally insulting things but he is banned from our page those comments are deleted and it was not really worth my time to speak back to him uh individually i can't imagine that wherever he is wherever he lives he does not have very many friends and um you know probably isn't that well liked with that kind of attitude however i did want to make a video response to those comments in case any of you smaller farmers out there saw that comment and were discouraged by it in fact comments like kevin's are pretty common on our facebook page and his are probably the worst i've seen but for eight years we have received comment after comment after comment about you know why do you guys run such old equipment how do you even find parts for that equipment why don't you go buy new equipment why don't you buy a new combine why don't you buy a new tractor why don't you guys farm more acres uh why why do you guys work so hard growing so many crops why don't you just grow corn and beans like us um things comments like that they go on and on and on and um you know i've gotten very frustrated over the years at some people's comments that are basically saying you know why aren't why don't you do things like we do or you know why don't you guys just be more successful why don't you just have more money to spend um it's it's it's very strange to me to read those comments so i have five things to say in response to those comments and to kevin's comments first of all the size of your farm here in in saline county kansas we are a very average farm we farm a little over 2 000 acres and that's pretty average okay if you go west of here to western kansas or if you go north to the dakotas up into canada such as where that guy's from farms can easily get in the five thousand ten thousand twenty thousand hundred thousand uh what i've learned in traveling around the us is that in general the farther west you go and the farther north you go the bigger the farms get it also seems that the farther away you are from population centers the bigger the farms get there's less competition less people live out there it's easier to grow there's just factors that factor into that so if you are farther west or if you're farther north um you probably think you're a big farm in the thousands and thousands of acres if you go farther east or if you go to where there's more of a population center you know maybe a couple hundred acres might be big or you know one or two thousand acres that's a big farm the same is true of the field sizes when you travel around the united states and canada in the eastern united states and if you go over to europe um you know your field sizes might be 40 acres your average field size our average field size is probably over 100 acres 80 acres is about the smallest field we deal with here in central kansas unless you're you know got a creek or a river running through it um if you go out west if you go up to canada i mean i've seen two 3000 acre fields before several square miles of just one field so things are just different everywhere you go and i would not compare myself to a farm in northern alberta growing canola we are a farm in central kansas growing other crops second thing it's okay to be a small farmer i don't care if you have a garden i don't care if you farm one acre 10 acres 100 000 10 000 if you're doing the best that you can with the acres that you have and the equipment that you have um that's what i would call a good farmer shout out to you guys you're the ones doing it right and i know for a fact that there are some smaller farmers again small as relative but there are some smaller farmers that do a much better job and work a lot harder than the bigger farmers there are some bigger farmers that are irresponsible that don't treat their land right that don't treat their employees right i also want to say that it's okay to be a large farmer and there are a lot of large farms that are doing great things that are that are farming really well and it is true that there is a such a thing as economy of scale and the bigger your farm the more efficient you are the better you get at doing things but that doesn't mean that being a small farmer means that you're a bad farmer so point number three is that large acres large amount of acres and brand new machinery does not equate to success on your farm in fact anyone could go out and take it you know million million million dollar loan buy a bunch of land and buy a bunch of brand new equipment and run that farm directly into the ground okay just because you have brand new equipment and a lot of acres does not make you a successful farmer and if you're a farm in central kansas like us that runs used equipment sometimes 20 30 40 years old you can be a successful farm and you can be a successful farm on your one thousand two thousand hundred acres not only is it okay to be a small farmer but it is okay to run used equipment especially if that equipment is paid for paid for used equipment is a better deal than brand new equipment ten times out of ten and anyone out there who is running paid off equipment shout out to you guys that is something to be commended that's something we don't celebrate enough instead a lot of us farmers we spend our time looking at a farmer that's that's bigger than us or who has nicer equipment than us and just i wish i had that instead of being happy about uh where we are and what we've accomplished so if you have used equipment um you can take pride in that there's something to be said about fixing the things that go wrong on used equipment and making do with what you have i mean that in itself is harder than running brand new equipment where things don't go wrong as much i mean you are are putting in more work uh to receive your harvest than some of those those bigger farmers are and so um that's just something to be committed i think it doesn't matter how many acres you're running it doesn't matter what type of equipment you're running you can still have a successful farm point number four is that every farm is different and that some farms have it better than others every farm varies by location by infrastructure by the amount of employees they have by the cost of land and equipment and inputs around them by opportunities they come across every farm has different opportunities they come across in in terms of expansion relationships uh every farm has different yield potentials on each of their uh ground i mean if you farm in iowa your yield potential is far greater than a farm in you know western united states on on marginable soil does that mean that the people farming marginal soil are worse farmers than people farming iowa soil no it just is you know these are we're talking about different things here and then also finally climate similar to your type of soil every farm in this world has a different climate and all of those factors and there are many more factors besides the ones i've talked about all those factors contribute to each farm being different and you can't really compare every single farm because there's so many factors uh going into each farm and that's why i say don't compare don't compare yourself to others do the best with what you have expand if if you want to and if it makes sense but you don't have to expand either you know sometimes it pays to just be thankful be content with however many acres you have for 15 years my dad did not try to expand our farm my grandpa passed away when i was nine years old and my dad decided that he would rather go to all of our um activities and events of us kids the three three boys and and laura our sister dad decided he would rather go to all of our sports and music events and school events he decided he would rather follow us around and be there first kids and then farm more acres and if my dad would have rather grown our farm to ten thousand acres and not showed up for a single one of my events as a kid that is not what i would have wanted i can tell you right now that i would rather be the size of farm that we are and work together with with my family um and and do the things that we do the way that we do them then run ten machines uh 24 hours a day for three weeks i have no desire to do something like that and i don't really have a desire to be the the biggest farmer in in the country or the state um or even the county working with my family and and having good quality of life having a good level of mental health and and you know keeping the things that are most important most important i think that is what is important to me and i feel sorry for for kevin uh drobot i feel sorry for him because i think he has lost sight of what is truly important and um and and when it boils down to it once you start degrading other people um you know you've really lost your way in life one of the main things that larger farms struggle with treatment of employees treatment of their families their relationships and quality of life in general um if you if you are a greedy farm that that is just trying to outbid your neighbors and take advantage of everyone around you and just only care about money and from what i could tell talking to this kevin guy that seemed to be the kind of guy he was didn't give a care about his relationship with other people uh i you know i i cannot tell you how wrong that is we were not put on this earth to only care about money to only be the biggest and the best and to to shut out all of those around us we were put on this earth to have relationships with those around us to love people around us and to um to have positive impact on people around us it's all about relationships it's not about your material possessions when you die you're not going to to think back on how much stuff you had and how big of a farm you had you're going to think back about how you treated other people the types of relationships you had and that's what's going to determine success at the end of your life so point number five and this is my main point is that it takes all different types and sizes of farms working together to feed the world kevin claimed that us tiny insignificant kansas farmers um don't mean anything it was him who fed the world not us he said that he farmed over a hundred thousand acres up there in canada um and we only farm a few thousand here in kansas ourselves on our farm but if you add all of us tiny insignificant kansas farmers together we farm 46 million acres across the state of kansas the world would not miss kevin's hundred thousand acres if they didn't farm for one year it wouldn't even matter but 46 million acres if you took 46 million acres out of production the world would feel it it takes every state every country every size of farm every type of crop every brand new s series combine and every 40 year old john deere 7720 to feed the world it takes all of us working together there is nothing worse than farmers on social media looking down upon other farms and making fun of them and judging them negatively based on one factor such as size or equipment and it's a lot like the world today we see all sorts of examples of people um looking down upon others because they're different from themselves and i i'm not talking about one side of a political spectrum or another i'm talking al all sides of political spectrums i'm talking about people from all countries people from all walks of life anymore in this world if if you're different from somebody else you know well i'm better and you're worse if we could just realize that success in this world is not about material possessions it's not about skin color or the amount of wealth you have it's not about whether you live in in a big city or a small town it's not about your political stance not everyone has it the same in this world we are all um dealing with thousands and thousands of variables our success is not measured by millions of dollars or millions of acres or any of our material possessions our success is determined by how we are if we are good stewards of what we've been given or not and how we treat other people so i just want to encourage you guys today i don't care if you're the smallest farmer in your county or if you're the biggest farmer in your county do the best with what you have treat others fairly and with respect and don't look down on someone because they have been less fortunate than you um we're all dealt different levels of luck in this country um you know sometimes i i think to myself man i wish my ancestors would have settled in iowa um instead they crossed iowa and came here to kansas where we deal with a lot of things that they don't deal with in iowa but at the same time in iowa and large farmers they have problems too everyone's got their own set of problems everyone needs to just do the best they can with what they've been given so i hope that message makes sense to you guys this guy kevin i'm not going to think about him again i'm going to let that one bounce off but i did want to make this video just to encourage those of you who have ever been discouraged by feeling that your farm isn't good enough it is good enough as long as you're doing your best with what you've been getting so thanks for watching everyone

Channel: Peterson Farm Bros

Views: 167,597

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Id: pSMLOPU_bgI

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020