Farm Funding: Linda

Linda speaks about growing up on a farm, and how her career helped her inform her current support for ongoing farming. There are many topics discussed regarding eating food, farming, and well educated conversations about the food system – even discussing a PhD article from 1851 to 1991. Here are a few quotes:  We need to be educated about the situation regarding our food. I am thrilled to be able to work with some of the hardest working people that you’ll find anywhere.. I don’t think people realize how many hats people have to wear Farmers are choosing to sell the land because that is their pension… the average age of a farmer … is 57… we have all kinds of land that is no longer in production… there are way too many barriers to entry. I would say that food is a key to rural economic development and it is vastly underutilized. We have now loaned over 1.9 million… 112 loans to 72 businesses The bottom line for farmers is not what it should be. When you see people investing their money in order to get a 6, 10, 12% return on investment, farmers would love to be able to even know they would get a 5 or even a 3, or 5% return on their investment I read the statistics, that the good news was that … the remaining.. producers …instead of basically actually paying us 3 cents on the dollar to eat their food... Regulations are becoming more and more stringent. I think that the best possible regulation is for me to buy from someone I know and buy the best food I can because it is grown here with all of the qualities I mentioned We need to raise awareness ...who has some discretion around their spending were to switch just 10%, and 50% would be wonderful … from whatever is cheapest to whatever is local… everything that we do helps.  If we believe in ourselves and want to support ourselves… we have billions and billions of dollars which are building other people’s economies. The quality of food that we can produce... there is no comparison between the taste of good food