Farmer Answers Farming Questions

Why do farmers always need subsidies?

Well, y'all not letting me ease into this episode.

You hit me with a haymaker right from the get-go.

I'm Matt Griggs.

I grow cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat here in Tennessee.

Let's answer your questions from the Internet.

This is Farming Support. [upbeat music]

Okay, first question.

How do you get your straight/regular lines in your fields?

Seems to me that farmers take some pretty serious pride

in having perfectly straight rows in their fields.

Well, I'd like to say it's all due to operator ability.

Unfortunately, I would be lying to you.

Most of our modern tractors that we use now

have what we call auto-steer.

The onboard computer is the one

that's actually doing the steering of the tractor

as we're going through the field.

I tell you what, let's actually go to the field,

and I will show you how this works.

Auto-steer is possible because of the GPS systems

that we have on this tractor.

When we get to the field,

we'll set what we call a guidance line.

To get a straight row, we set what we call an AB line.

That means that we will put the tractor

into the position that we want.

On the computer, we will go to the other end in the field,

and we will mark a B point,

and then the computer will draw a perfectly straight line

between the A point and the B point,

hit our auto-steer button, and the tractor takes over,

and will actually steer to the line,

and then that line will then be repeated across the field.

And that's how farmers get their

perfectly straight lines in the field.

This next one is from the Homestead subreddit.

What are your must-have tools/equipment on the farm?

For one thing, we need a tractor,

to pull the various implements that we need to raise crops.

Whether it be a planter, a plow,

a sprayer to apply pesticides.

We need a harvest machine to be able to harvest the crop.

A combine or a combine harvester

can actually harvest multiple different crops,

but all of them are going to be grain.

If you're growing other types of crops,

you're probably going to need a specific type

of harvester just for that crop.

If you're a grain farmer,

and you wanna be able to take maximum advantage

of the commodity market,

and sell your crops at the highest prices,

you might need a system of grain bins

in order to store that crop.

You're probably gonna need several equipment sheds

to store your equipment under,

because this equipment is hundreds and thousands of dollars,

and you don't want it sitting outside in the weather

during the times that you're not going to use it.

This question comes from Past Gain 1700.

How do you keep track of what you're growing,

how much you're growing, and when to harvest?

Do you use any tools, apps, spreadsheets, farm software,

to help manage cost, sales or inventory?

There's a multitude of different tools that we use.

Just about every time that we make a trip across the field,

the tractors or harvester or sprayer that we're using

has an onboard computer that is logging

what we're actually doing.

This is a map of one of our fertilizer applications.

The red parts of the field indicate

where we were applying more fertilizer,

whereas the green parts

are where we were applying less fertilizer.

And all of this is based upon the soil tests

that we pull every two and a half acres across the farm,

showing the different levels of fertility.

We're then able to vary the amount

of fertilizer we're applying.

This map right here was produced by my combine last year

whenever we were harvesting corn.

It represents the varying yields as we go across the field.

Around the edges of the fields, most of that is red

because that's a lower yielding area of the field,

mainly due to the competition of trees

surrounding the field,

competing for nutrients and blocking sunlight.

This map represents all the different soil types.

Just because you see dirt out there

doesn't mean that all dirt is created equally.

Some soils may be well drained, some may be poorly drained,

some may be highly erodible,

some might have greater natural fertility.

So as you can see, there's a lot of different technology

that we can use, and what ties all of this together

is usually a software program

that we'll have on our computer

that we store all this data on,

that we can then go in and analyze all this data

to determine what we need to do for the next year.

Lobcitybajams asks, WTF is a bushel and a peck?

I don't know what a peck is either myself,

but I do know what a bushel is.

A bushel is a unit of volume

that's used to measure dry goods,

equal to about 9.3 US gallons.

That's a liquid measurement.

I'm selling a dry measurement.

So a bushel of corn is equal to 56 pounds of actual corn,

60 pounds of soybeans, 60 pounds of wheat.

Currently corn is $4.60 for a bushel. Soybeans is $10.50.

Wheat is $5.50 for a bushel of wheat.

Wesley Ruden asked,

How crazy are the GPS systems in the tractors?

Well, Wesley, they're pretty crazy.

They're also crazy expensive.

The GPS systems on your phone,

they're probably only really accurate

to within 10 to 20 feet.

Now when we're in the field, we need a lot greater accuracy.

Some of the systems on these tractors can be accurate

to within one inch of where you actually are on this Earth.

Now this one inch accuracy is possible

through the use of RTK on our systems,

or real-time kinematics,

using base stations located across an area.

There's a lot of interference between our satellite receiver

and the satellites in outer space.

These base stations help correct for that error

to let us know within an inch

of where exactly we are in the field.

Lot of farmers need to be accurate down to the closest inch.

Well, that's because GPS controls a lot more

than just actually steering the tractor.

A lot of times, part of our equipment

is passing over a section of the field

that has already been planted.

So we have the ability to shut off row by row

as we're going through the field

as we get into an area that's already been planting,

so we're not over applying seed,

and we're also not spending extra money on inputs

that we don't actually need.

There are currently tractors being developed

that don't even have a cab,

don't even have a place for an operator to sit on,

and we'll be operating completely autonomously.

This question is from the subreddit No Stupid Questions.

Why does farming have such a high death rate

as a job in the USA?

Yes, farming can be extremely dangerous.

We're operating heavy machinery,

we're working with chemicals.

We can be working in extreme heat.

And then not only that,

we're dealing with an extremely stressful career,

and some of us can be facing financial ruins.

I've almost been killed several times on my job.

Just a few years ago,

I was actually ejected through the windshield

of my combine harvester

as I was going down the road at about 22 miles an hour.

The combine harvester came within about five feet

of rolling over me and crushing me.

I came this close to actually losing my life that day.

And that actually happened because I was in a hurry,

and I had taken some safety shortcuts that day.

@nankanskei asked, How do you become a farmer?

Like is there just an application for it?

Or do you just start digging?

If you're row crop farming,

the one thing you most definitely need is land.

And unless you already own a lot of land,

you have to go convince other landowners

to allow you to farm their land,

and show them that you can make a profit for them

because they're just not gonna let you farm it for free.

The way I got into farming

is that I was actually born into it.

I'm a fifth-generation farmer.

That means that there were four previous generations

of Griggs that farmed this ground

before I had the opportunity to do it.

Simon Hancock asked,

How much profit do you think farmers make?

I can't speak to how much farmers make,

but I can tell you how much we made over the last few years.

In 2023, we had a gross income of $1.83 million on our farm.

Now, of that gross, $72,000 of that was profit.

That doesn't necessarily mean that $72,000 goes in my pocket

and me and my wife can go take a nice fancy vacation.

The vast majority of that $72,000 remained in the business

to invest in the next year,

whether it's purchasing seed, chemicals,

and fertilizer for the next year,

or making needed investments in equipment.

In 2024, our gross income dropped to $1.65 million.

And of that, there was no profit.

In fact, we actually wound up losing $300,000

worth of profit,

and that was even after the government subsidies

that we received.

Now, why do we have such a decrease

in gross revenue last year?

Well, right here is an ear of corn

that we harvested last year.

That's not a very impressive ear of corn.

Our yields were devastated by long extreme drought,

and we had lower yields across the board.

Even though we had depressed commodity prices

and lower yields, our input costs,

the cost we pay for our seeds, our fertilizer,

and our chemicals, were actually up due to inflation.

Now looking at 2025,

we're still dealing with what's projected

to be lower commodity prices,

and relatively high input prices.

But if we can return to more of a normal year,

if we avoid the drought,

we're set to gross, hopefully $1.51 million,

and through extreme cost-cutting measures

that we've taken this winter,

hopefully at the end of the year,

we will net about $36,000 worth of profit.

GadgieOld asked, Why do farmers always need subsidies?

Subsidies are necessary

because farming is extremely, extremely expensive,

but it's also very necessary for the survival of society.

We can't control the prices

that we receive for our commodities.

We also can't control the weather.

In my opinion, the American taxpayer

actually gets a return on its investment.

Because farming subsidies actually ensure

that there is a very bountiful cheap supply of food

in the store.

See, subsidies keep a lot of farmers in business.

You keep farmers in business,

well, there's more competition.

There's more competition to produce more and more

so that you can remain in business.

An abundant food supply leads to a cheaper food supply.

Now, there's a wide array of subsidies

that can be paid to farmers.

Like the crop insurance that we purchase to help ensure

that we don't go outta business when we experience a loss.

The crop insurance premium is subsidized

by the federal government.

If we experience a disaster year,

you know there might be a disaster payment.

In the event of disaster,

it's very unlikely that any subsidy money

will cover our losses for that year.

@itsjoethesecond asked,

What's the purpose of this dried out corn

that's going to be harvested?

Like what do they do with it?

Well, Joe, there's a whole lot of different uses

for that corn.

The vast majority of corns you see growing out in the fields

is what we call field corn, or dent corn.

It's not the type that you eat off the cob,

but the field corn that we grow

is used for so many other purposes.

10% of the gas that you put in your car

actually came from corn.

It's called ethanol. Do you happen to like Mexican food?

It's used in tortilla shells and many other ingredients.

Do you like cornbread? It's in there also.

One of the biggest uses for corn

is high fructose corn syrup,

a sweetener that's used in many of the products you can buy

in your grocery store, especially soft drinks.

Beacheytunez asks, How big of an issue is soil erosion,

and what can we do about it?

Is there anywhere it's particularly bad?

Soil erosion is a huge problem.

We have erosion caused by water running across the land

and removing soil particles, but there's also wind erosion.

One of the worst examples of wind erosion

was actually the dust bowl of the 1930s,

when the Midwest was impacted by severe, severe drought.

Now, the Midwest was natively a grasslands,

and the grass helped anchor the soil and hold it into place.

However, when you plow the soil,

it destroyed all of those native grasses

and loosened the soil up.

And then when drought came in in the 1930s,

it was very susceptible to wind erosion

because the Midwest gets a lot of high winds.

And when you have a bunch of loose dry soil particles

on the surface, the wind can pick it up and sweep it away.

But here in the hills of Tennessee,

erosion is a huge concern

because we have hillsides funneling water

into certain locations that can easily wash away the soil.

Now farming has come a long way

from the dust bowls of the 1930s.

We now have the technology called no till.

That means that we're planting

and maintaining our crops without ever plowing the soil.

If we're not disturbing the soil,

the soil has a whole lot less chance of being eroded away.

It is our goal to have a living plant growing on our ground

12 months out of the year.

That means that the raindrops that are falling

are not actually impacting the soil

and dislodging soil particles.

It's hitting the plant material first,

and then being diffused down to the soil.

The roots actually help to hold the soil together,

really minimizing the impact of erosion.

We will actually harvest

only about four to five months out of the year.

That leaves seven to eight months that we don't have a crop

that we're going to harvest growing,

and we fill that void by planting what we call a cover crop,

any plant or a mixture of different types of plants

that we actually seed into the ground

to grow and anchor the soil,

and protect it against erosion for the fall

and winter months until we get ready

to plant our next cash crop.

Hoot McNoot asks, I wonder how farmers keep pest, diseases,

and unwanted critters away from their crops?

There are pesticides that we use to kill insects,

or to prevent disease.

However, there's other ways other than using chemicals

to minimize damage to your fields.

And a lot of these are referred to as cultural practices.

For example, to help minimize disease in our field,

we try to rotate our crops every year.

We might plant corn this year,

and in the following year, we'll plant cotton,

and in the following year we'll plant soybeans.

And what we're doing is we're breaking the disease cycle

because a lot of these diseases

will only attack one specific crop.

In our area, deer is a big problem,

but they favor certain types of crops, especially soybeans.

Now, there are ways to kind of help minimize that,

and one of those ways is by allowing hunters onto your farm

during the hunting season,

to help thin out the population some.

But farmers have learned to accept

that there will be a certain level of damage to their crops

year after year after year.

Tony Karos asks,

How is soil replenished in farming fields?

The matter that the plant consists of comes from the soil.

When parts of these plants are removed for usage,

that implies a matter deficit in this field.

So isn't the field supposed to recede with every harvest?

There are certain things that the plant needs

to take out of the soil in order to produce the crop.

And if these nutrients are not replenished,

plants will naturally deplete the soil of these nutrients.

Now, that's really not going to cause the soil level to drop

because a six inch depth of soil across an acre

weighs about two million pounds.

Well, an acre of corn might pull out 200 pounds of nitrogen,

70, 80, 90 pounds of phosphorus,

a little bit less than that of potassium,

and those are going to be the major nutrients

that the plant uptakes.

All of these nutrients will be replaced with fertilizer.

So while crops are pulling something out of the soil,

it's in relatively low amounts,

and it's not going to cause the soil to recede

year after year of growing crops.

We got a question from Explain Like I'm Five Reddit.

How do farmers water their fields?

If it doesn't rain,

are they just screwed over for the year?

Basically, if it doesn't rain,

yeah, we are screwed over for the year, for the most part.

However, some farmers do have the ability

to irrigate their fields to be able

to supply supplemental water to a crop in a growing season.

Now on our farm, we don't practice any irrigation

because we generally don't need it.

In our climate, we receive approximately

52 inches of rainfall every year.

However, as you move out west,

it's a lot more arid environment,

and irrigation is a lot more popular out there,

and farmers can irrigate in a variety of ways.

Some farmers may have center pivots,

an overhead irrigation system that travels in a circle

and sprinkles water on top of the crop.

Other farmers where a water supply might be more abundant,

say in your rivers and streams or whatever,

might practice flood irrigation to where they roll out pipe,

punch holes in the pipe,

and it'll shoot a stream of water down every row,

or every other row.

Now in really arid environments

where water is a much more limited resource,

farmers have drip tape installed,

and will run irrigation water through that tape

that will then leach out in the soil.

Now, this method is very efficient,

however, it can be very, very expensive

to install and maintain.

Sam Dobermann asked,

How's the trade war affecting farmers?

Well, Sam, the trade war is affecting farmers in some ways.

However, this isn't the first time

that we've been through this.

During President Trump's first term in office,

he entered into a trade war with China,

and this affected the farmers greatly then,

because while America imports all sorts of goods

in from China,

about the only thing that China buys from the US

is our agricultural commodity.

So the only way that China could retaliate against the US

was withdrawing from purchasing agricultural economies,

and this led to a multi-year period

where we experienced especially depressed prices

for our commodities.

Towards the end of President Trump's first term,

he was able to enter into a trade agreement with China,

in which China had guaranteed to purchase billions

of more dollars of agricultural goods.

However, after President Trump was voted out of office,

and President Biden was voted into office,

China went back to doing, well, what China does,

which is renege on a lot of different agreements.

Now that President Trump is back in in office,

he's entered into another trade war, not only with China,

but with a bunch of other different nations.

In the near term, it is going to be painful,

and we will suffer most likely depressed prices

for could be an extended period of time.

If President Trump is not able to get the trade deals

that he wants or the following administrations

do not hold these countries to these trade deals,

it's going to be just like it was the first round.

We will have suffered for pretty much nothing.

The American farmer produces about

16 billion bushels of corn every year.

Of that, around 2.2 is exported to other countries.

Exports plays a lot bigger role in soybeans.

We produce around 4.5 billion bushels

of soybeans every year.

Of that, about 2.21 billion bushels is exported.

About 85% of the 13 million bales of cotton

that is produced in the US every year

is actually exported to other countries.

So any potential cuts to these exports that I told you about

could prove devastating to the American farmer

for the short term.

@CarolJHedges asks, Why do weeds grow faster than crops?

The crops that we grow have been bred

over years and years and years for maximum production,

not for survival.

Our primary purpose in breeding crops

is to produce a maximum amount of yield

that involves growing over a longer period of time,

given that plant a longer lifecycle,

and the ability to capture more sunlight

to be able to support that higher yield.

Whereas the weeds that are present in our field

have bred themselves through self-selection to survive.

And one of the mechanisms that these weeds use to survive

is to grow really, really quick,

so they can outcompete any other surrounding plants,

produce their seed and die,

thus ensuring that that species of weed

will survive year after year after year.

Acolacci19 asks, So are GMOs bad?

GMOs are perfectly safe.

Now, GMOs actually came about, oh, about the mid-1990s,

where scientists were able to insert a Bt gene

into some of our crops.

And what this Bt gene is,

is a toxin that is actually produced

by bacteria called bacillus thuringiensis.

Now, this Bt toxin is completely harmless

to animals and people.

It has no effect on us at all.

However, to the lepidopteran pest,

or your caterpillar pest, it can be deadly.

This particular ear of sweet corn is a GMO.

It was genetically modified

to resist certain herbicides sprayed on the fields.

See, I have no problems myself,

either eating or consuming GMOs,

because they're perfectly safe.

Essa618 asks, What is the biggest expense cost you have?

Farming is an expensive game, there's no secret about that.

But actually identifying the most expensive part of farming,

well, it can kind of vary from farm to farm to farm.

For me personally, our biggest line item expense

is going to be our repair and maintenance costs.

On average, every year, I spend between two and $300,000

repairing and maintaining our equipment.

Other farms might run the newest equipment.

In that case, their biggest line item expense

might be actually paying for that equipment.

For example, a brand new large size tractor's

probably going to run you about $450,000.

A brand new combine harvester

is going to be approaching close to a million dollars.

A brand new cotton picker that we might only use two weeks

out of every year is gonna set you back about $1.2 million.

So you can either spend a whole lot of money every year

on equipment, not have to fix it as much,

or you can run older equipment that doesn't cost as much,

but you're going to pay to keep it repaired and maintained.

@ArsenalUltraist asked,

How do farmers get their goods to market, genius?

Well, genius, we haul our crops to market.

Farmers is the one industry that has to buy retail,

sell wholesale, and pay the freight both ways.

Some places, we might haul our crops

just a few miles down the road.

Other times we might have to haul our crops

50 to 100 miles down the road,

just depending on what area or location

is paying the best for our crop.

@Deborahwrites asked,

What do you feel is the hardest part of farming?

Farmers are the biggest gamblers out there,

because we're planting crops in the spring

on the faith and the prayer

that things will go the way they need to go

to produce a profitable crop all year long,

with factors that we can't control ourselves,

such as weather.

But I've gotta say, one of the most stressful things

that I have to do on the farm

is actually transporting equipment up and down the road.

Our equipment has gotten tremendous in size.

Our roads have stayed the same size.

Our roads have also gotten busier

due to urbanization encroaching on our farms.

So transporting farm equipment in a safe manner

down our busier public roads

has actually become one of the more stressful things

that we have to do.

@RadmoreFarm says,

Farmers do so much more than just make food.

I like to think we're custodians of the countryside.

What else do farmers do that you think people forget?

Not only do we grow the food and fiber

that you eat and wear, we have to be agronomists.

We have to be pathologists, we have to be mechanics.

We might need to be electricians.

There's just so many different aspects of the job

that we need to have a very broad base of information

in order to be successful as farmers.

This next question comes from a farming subreddit.

What is a day in the life of a farmer like?

One of the greatest benefits to being a farmer

is that our life is definitely not boring.

Our schedule is dictated by the seasons,

and more importantly, by the weather.

The past few weeks has been extremely, extremely busy,

because we're getting ready for planting.

Myself and the crew that works with me,

we've put in about 85 hours each week

just to get our fields ready to plant.

That's a lot longer than an eight-to-five job,

and it does not include weekends off.

This latest question is from Jiggy.

He asks, What do farmers do in the winter?

Wintertime is one of the most important times on our farm

because we are preparing for the next year.

We plant in the spring.

All summer long is spent tending and maintaining the crops.

We harvest in fall, so a lot of winter,

we're running our equipment through our shop

and fixing anything that needs to be fixed,

going through the finances, going through all of our data,

determining what changes we need to make for next year,

determining what seeds we need to buy,

getting financing lined up for next year,

going through training and classes

to improve our operation and so on.

Kerina F. Murray asked,

How can we make farming more sustainable, economical,

and environmentally friendly?

Now, many farmers are some of the best environmentalists

you will ever find out there because, well, our career,

our livelihood depends on the state of the environment.

However, that doesn't mean

that there's not room for improvement.

A lot of these companies

we buy our chemicals and our inputs from,

these companies' main goal, obviously, is to sell a product.

So their research is really going to skew towards

pushing more of a product,

instead of producing less of a product.

The most reliable, consistent, independent research

that is done is usually done at the university level

by our land grant universities.

And in my opinion, there needs to be more funding

to these land-grant universities to fund more research

to determine whether we can say, cut more fertilizer,

or cut more products to be more sustainable

and more environmentally friendly.

ThickDoctor007 asks,

Is it possible to switch to organic farming 100%?

Yes, it is possible to switch to organic farming 100%.

However, it's not necessarily easy

to switch to organic farming 100%.

I would have to almost completely change

all of my agronomic practices.

Now, this could potentially be rewarding

because organic products at the store

do bring a higher price

than the conventionally-grown products that I produce.

In order to be certified organic,

I must completely reject all of my conventional practices

and use only organic practices for three consecutive years

on a piece of ground before I can be certified organic.

In that three-year period,

I can still grow products using organic methods.

However, I cannot sell my products as organic products,

and I'm receiving the price

that conventional products bring.

If you farm organically, you're going to have lower yields,

because you can't use a lot of the products

that boost yields

because they're considered to be supplied inorganically.

I'm going to be very limited in my weed control,

so I'm going to probably experience more competition

from weeds reducing yields.

I'm really going to be limited in my insect control.

I would also be very limited

in what types of fertilizers I'm able to use.

Mostly only being able to use manure as a fertilizer,

which is not a bad fertilizer source.

However, it is slower acting,

and takes longer to become plant available

than what our inorganic fertilizers that we use are.

So while it is possible to switch 100% to organic,

you're looking at a three-year window with lower yields,

and lower incomes until you can finally reap the benefits

of farming organically.

So those are all the questions for today.

Thanks for watching Farming Support.