| I look like a farmer, but I’m a lover;
You can’t judge a book by lookin’ at the cover.
- You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover by Bo Diddley
Ask anyone about American farms, or farmers, or farm life and you’ll get answers like this:
“E-I-E-I-O!”
“It’s that place where pigs and sheep and rats live together and talk to each other in a special language? And the spiders write words in their webs?!”
“Yeah, that’s the place where the cows started a rebellion… the pigs are the oppressors and take away everyone’s rewards, and there is a pig named “Squealer” who is like cable news. Right?”
So, I watched the Oscars. Which have nothing - except for human life - in common with the American small-to-mid-size farmer.
I am a long-lost child of a family who farms - some of whom are found along those tiny asphalt veins that that spread out and expand deep into the obscure recesses of the Midwest, growing crops and feeding livestock smack dab in the middle of millions and millions of acres of some of the richest farmland in the world.
There, nestled between some of the most fertile river valleys gracing the globe with rich bottomland, they farm the breadbasket to this planet. The truth is that those farms and those farmers - not to mention those in the south, the west, and up into the northeast part of our nation could (if allowed) feed every person on Earth.
Twice over.
Midwest farms are responsible for some 15-17 billion bushels of yearly corn. Field corn is the kind that pays bills and comes one to two ears to a stalk, just FYI. To eat it as sweet corn you better get to it before it has ripened. Otherwise, it hardens into starchy pellets that cows and pigs like to grind with their molars.
Ethanol uses it too. |
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A little corn history for ya. Corn was a wild mutant plant which was morphed into a sort of deviancy by the earliest Americans: the Aztecs and the Mayans. Today’s corn is a descendant of their work and has now, who knows? 200 varieties? More? Whatever, corn has long since been domesticated and developed, starting with those native Americans north and south. Throw in corn circles, silos that look like launching pads, and the numerous cultures from disparate places on Earth… it sounds like a screenplay for a sci-fi thriller…
Why the history?
Because it’s interesting.
Because it is everything that motion pictures purport to be with their big awards show.
Think about it. Story; check! Character arc? Check! Confrontations and obstacles and events that must be overcome? Check, check and check!
Agriculture has all the themes prevalent in modern film: man vs nature; man vs machines; Man vs Man. It’s just as competitive as any professional sports league - neighbor vs neighbor and farmer vs other countries - sometimes farmer vs government. (I have it an shaky authority that a first draft of the tenth commandment was about coveting thy neighbor’s corn.)
Not to mention the obvious links to horror movies (scarecrows), romcoms (come on… the iconic painting by Grant Wood with the guy holding a pitchfork next to his… girlfriend? Wife? Significant Other?), teensploitation flicks (see horror movies) and drama (you want drama? Try raising wheat during a drought; try dealing with the bird flu when you raise poultry; or just deal with the overwhelming regulations, taxes, transportation fees, and maintenance of your $150,000 combine… I got your drama right here, buddy).
So why isn’t there an awards show for farmers and the business of agriculture? Sure, they have the Future Farmers of America (FFA) and 4-H (I bet you don’t know what that stands for) both of which have awards.
But those organizations have nothing like an Oscars Orgy-of-Ego, with the preening and posing and eulogizing and slobbering lack of self-awareness that IS Hollywood and the motion picture industry.
The Oscars always feel as if I’m watching a meeting for Over-Actors Anonymous.
“Hi, I’m Bob and I’m an over-actor…”
“Hi, Bob!”
I suppose the first answer to “why isn’t there an awards show for farmers?” could be: “BECAUSE FARMING IS BORING.” Could that be it? Have you ever watched all three hours of the Oscars? Objection sustained.
I think it has more to do with the fact that the American farm, and farm family, is the definition of a minority. A microscopic one. And the people who run small-and-medium-sized farms in 2025 are - let’s be honest - the serf class of American society. Rural America has become a colony from which cities and suburbs suck the wealth and prosper. The farmer is expected to grow and raise healthy, chemical-free, environmentally-safe, nutritious, high-quality, affordable food for the masses.
Shouldn’t the people who grow and raise food get a little more respect?
NOTE: the American farmer is the original environmentalist. So, to make the Department of Agriculture an environmental operation is laughable. One example is no-till farming (or zero tillage if you are so inclined), the roots of which started in Kentucky (some say Ohio) in the 1940s. This was after the Dust Bowl ended years of planting in the plains states, and the American farmer had to figure out how to conserve soil. It’s one of the first sustainable production systems that improves soil health and reduces greenhouse gases. |
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No politician or bureaucrat was there to help Harry Young and Shirley Phillips, the two names associated with the original idea and who are considered to have authored the concept.
Whatever, it worked and still does. Farmers are more environmentally conscious - for good reason - than just about any industry anywhere.
Give ‘em the Oscar for “best growing system.”
Quick factual point: if the American farmer charged for his/her services and product the way every other business does (which is to say: THROUGH THE NOSE), they would be the elitist class of our society. Wanna teach the “free market” to young people? Take ‘em to a farmers market far away from a metropolitan area. Can you say “barter?”
These are reasons why the American farmer doesn’t have an awards show: - farmers and their families have been and are, more than ever, ignored;
- they are taken for granted. No PR firm, no Creative Artists Agency, no talk show or super-popular-podcast defends or promotes them;
- it is a tough life, where recessions and taxes and tariffs and inflation, not to mention the reality of survival, is a brutally honest part of day-to-day existence. And that’s all taken for granted. Hence no cultural award or recognition for farming.
(I think the American farmer likes it that way.)
Agriculture is a wild, impossible-to-break-down-into-a-newsletter business. It cannot be told succinctly and without bringing in history, science, the environment, global politics, economics, and an emotional capacity for perseverance and commitment. Not to mention words like FAMILY, COMMUNITY, FAITH, and CRITICAL THINKING.
Agriculture does not scale in a world of TikTok videos and Facebook memes. The American farmer lives a life that is incomprehensible to the world today. American farmers have a sense that life owes them nothing but what they can make of it.
In 2025 one farmer does what 20-25 did 50-60 years ago. I don’t know who was the first genius to “plant” something, but I know living off the land was then, and always will be, a tough row to hoe.
The United States, at its birth, was an agrarian society. Thomas Jefferson had his agrarian dream, meaning a large part of the population would be living on farms. That is no longer a possibility. I get it. In the beginning, 95 percent of this nation was agribusiness. Now it’s the complete opposite. Five percent of the nation farms.
But Jefferson’s ideology is more valid than ever.
Food is the basic necessity of life, far more important than the Internet, sports, video, music, and certainly major motion pictures. Americans enjoy a bountiful food supply that is safe, nutritious, easy-to-get, and mostly affordable.
The agri-business people deserve a major TV awards show to celebrate their own “Oscar.”
It’ll never happen.
It’s March. Time to plant. Livestock to feed. Regulations to meet. Plans to make, seeds to buy, equipment to update and markets to study.
They don’t have time to give each other an awards show, bragging about their designer gowns, sashaying across soundstages, giving unsolicited and often uneducated lectures about their insecurities and myopic belief systems.
Farmers have to go to work.
So you and I can eat.
Because you can’t make it through three hours of Academy Awards without at least some kind of snack.
Thanks for reading!
Taylor Podcasts Spotify Cameo Irreversible (my book) |
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