2021 Kansas Notable Book; Lindsay Metcalf; Unknown

how do you teach kids about the farm crisis of the nineteen seventies and j mcintyre and today on k pr presents for kansas notable book series continues with farmers unite planting a protest for fair prices by lindsay metcalf of can korea can says lucy congratulations on being a kansas notable book winner thank you so much it's a huge honor take us back to nineteen seventy seven and set the stage for us a little bit what would they like being a farmer in the nineteen seventies well you have to understand that i was not alive at that point i was born in nineteen eighty one so this is all the history that ive researched and come across the in my family and other sources so if any of you listeners know more than i do that's why on its own in the late nineteen seventies i believe thirty the usda had been encouraging farmers to plant fence row to fence row and prices were good for a while and people were you know building in their field

and then out in nineteen seventy seven you see prices start to plummet on new sea the oil prices and gas prices skyrocketing and farmers are starting to lose their farms and in nineteen seventy seven seventy eight there was a group called the american agriculture movement who started to gather in grassroots way they start out to colorado and little pockets popped up all over the midwest and the south attack says and throughout the south and farmers are just trying to figure out how do we get this message across that were losing their farms and of people in congress especially don't pay attention that the people who are connected to farms are going to be able to eat so in nineteen seventy eight about fifty thousand farmers gathered in washington dc for a protest after the american agriculture

movement not happened after the protest so they decided to regroup after that and then at the very beginning of nineteen seventy nine and beginning of january ten thousand tractors trucks campers you name it left their farms and i cherish and other way to washington you see a man up there in february of nineteen seventy nine and they had crawled across the country along several main routes and there were many people from kansas missouri who trouble their hands they they just wanted to make a splash get people's attention and they didn't get attention in the way that they won it at first when they arrived in dc and the thing with lindsay metcalf her book is farmers unite planting a protest for fair prices it's a kansas notable book winner for twenty twenty one lizzie what happened when they got to dc when they get to dc if you can picture what

you know about city traffic washington dc is notorious for traffic jams and they arrive during rush hour in the morning every fourth nineteen seventy nine all of these tractors these giant machine means and they they ginned up the main arteries heading downtown toward the national mall so that was the news coverage because at the time the farmers were clogging up the city and there you know there wasn't a lot of coverage about why they were there is just this huge traffic jam is happening and it's because of all of these farmers how did a snowstorm turn the tide so to speak it was so interesting to me and they had they were well first let's go back because after they arrived in dc the police corral them on the national mall they can do more than men and the police

actually brought out all of their cruiser's olive their city vehicles they could find and literally made a crowd on them also farmers thought they were trapped and they started getting rowdy and so the the present they were getting was related to all this traffic and they're ravenous and then you have a snowstorm that happens on president's day and snow piles up about knee high and shuts the city down and it was to the point where ambulances and fire trucks were sliding off the roads and they didn't have anyone to you know facilitate emergencies but the foreigners were there and they happen to have a big equipment and many of them have scoops on the front of their tractors so they rose up and they volunteered to clear the city basically and they were giving rides to anyone and

everyone i could find including congress numbers that a congressman issa promised they were sound that cleared from waits at the airport they cleared the parking lot the washington post which hadn't given them favorable coverage but they they actually got some commendations from local fire departments because of people they had helped develop a heart attack victim so at that point they are gearing themselves to the people of washington dc i'm dancing with lindsay my cap sees the author of farmers unite planting a protest for a fear prices lindsay talk about the role but president jimmy carter played himself a farmer his role was very minimal he was a larger than life figure to the farmers and they really wanted to reach and they were hoping for help with the farm bill they were hoping for parody hundred percent you know parody so that they could get a fair price for their their commodities

and so they were speaking with congress but ultimately they wanted to meet with president carter and they never were able to meet and so this was a big disappointment for the american agricultural of the protesters who ended in washington dc and on their protests eventually ended at the end of february early march and there are some other problems at the end but they went home and regroup to get so then what happened with the agricultural movement you know from what i understand is quieting down a little bit they were there were things that they did all over the country but they don't get as much press as they did during those two protests in nineteen seventy eight nineteen seventy nine but then a unified crisis was really gearing up in the early eighties and by nineteen eighty i there were hundreds of firearms being lost

every day and one of the farmers who had attended the tractor croke protester they call them track kids his name was david and he was losing his farm at that time but he got an opportunity to lead the american agriculture movement and a formal way in washington dc a city and his family moved to dc became lobbyist for this cause and then in nineteen eighty five he decided you know we've got to do something to get people's attention again so he hosted another protest wasn't nearly as big but it was something that was easy to photograph so i'm eleven newspapers and they were making them all look like a graveyard day had hundreds of signs with names of farmers who lost their lives or their farms and they planted them on the mall and so this was splashed all over the news and one very important

person side and on an idea and his name was willie nelson and so what you brought that up because for those of us who lived through that era that weren't directly involved or affected the one the inmates or the one memory we probably have the least i know i do all of that era specifically nineteen eighty five was the farm aid concert and willie nelson yeah you know when i started working on this book i didn't even know the connection to fight but it was absolutely inspired by the american agriculture movement willie had been on the road and seen finds at auction and then he sees this image of their you know i'm all as a graveyard and comes up with an idea for a charity concert now they have finally they had eighty thousand people if you remember attended in champaign illinois answer the real several million dollars and that got a lot of

press most people from that era remember it i didn't remember and i was four years old at the time but you know just a handful of million of dollars going to pull all the farmers out of the crisis so what that money really was useful for is they help the farmers organize normally they created a farmer and reenter congress which is basically gathering delegates from all over the country so that they can read discuss and come up with priorities that they wanted to ford on to congress and three with lindsay metcalf she's the mother of farmers unite planting a protest for fair prices how did the farm crisis play out here in kansas you know you can still see the echoes of that now i live in a small town concord here and we're doing pretty well a lot of their smaller towns and you see empty stores still in their downtowns around it was a trickle down effect there were farmers

who ended up leaving their farms and how and when they didn't have money to buy a car you know their car dealership suffered and they were in there were all sorts of problems with the farm crisis here in kansas and today we see are fewer family farm stand it did in the nineteen eighties or seventies unfortunate that my family still has an active family farm but things have changed they've had to grow bigger and bigger in order to afford to make a living so you see even family farms you know upgrading their equipment so that they can plant more at one time so that they can harvest more with the bigger combine and it's just bigger and bigger and bigger in order to stay afloat and so how did you first become aware of this story i love that

you asked this because it's my favorite favorite part of it on income korea there's a farmer named her core through collects antique farm equipment he has outlined his detractors from the nineteen twenties and he likes to show them off so the end i think twenty sixteen twenty seventeen he held an event called prairie plowing days and he had a steam tractors with gang plus hooked up and if you're familiar with game cloud icon not you have to time have multiple people standing out there's being killed by the track they physically lower one flower time down into the field while the tractor pulls and so it's really fun to watch and the springtime this was happening i am personally did not attend but my father who is a farmer was there and texted me a picture and the teacher was out another contractor i just a regular tractor from later iraq and there was a big sign on the back that said washington dc or

boston and this got my mind churning because i could not reconcile how this rickety old tractor could have gotten to washington dc and back again is exactly exactly so that got me asking questions and first was a google search and i found the kinsley librarian kinsley kansas which had done a series of oral history interviews with some farmers look to that area in western kansas and found that there was all kinds of information at first and foremost i was just shocked that i hadn't heard of this and i had grown up in the farm crisis and i didn't want another generation to go without knowing this visit with lindsay metcalf sees the other farmers unite planting a protest for a fare prices is you're doing the research for this story as you mentioned you come from a farming family how did your family or did your family weigh in on

their own recollections of the time eighty head i was talking my father's names knowing incident and he had forgotten that he had attended an american agriculture movement protests there was one in wichita at some point end he had gone down with the friends and i guess i didn't do that and so i had read several versions of the story and i actually got in touch with the owner of that tractor the washington dc or busted tractor and his name is dylan hulburt and again well scrap books and memorabilia and money borrowed an answer that was a wonderful wealth of information for me to begin with and you know also on whatever the story for accuracy that story again as farmers unite planting a protest or a fair prices by lindsay metcalf of concordia kansas lindsey what age is the splintered for the markets were ready to twelve year olds and i think

that's a that's a good age for it it's a short read it's only about two thousand words it's got photographs on every page but the concept farm economics as maybe a little too high level for younger children but we call this a middle grade book and i think it's it's perfect for for anyone who's in this area who not only may be connected to a foreigner likes to eat i think i think all issues are relevant still because as a you know last year we were still seeing low prices and there's still some of the themes that persists in agriculture today when i think one of those teams is the disconnect that many of us city folk have between farmers and agricultural economics and the food that we buy a bigger shoe store and that shows up on our plate so there's a good lesson there for all of us what

challenges does it pose trying to present this kind of history and agricultural economics too readers of the eight to twelve year old age group i think with any non fiction topic that he might approach free for children you have to understand it well enough to break it down in the simplest terms and so the thing that i focused on was the voices of the farmers on the at the oral histories and interviews that i did and some of the documents that i read the voices were just so crisp and clear and they have so much heart i i knew that kids could connect have done if they were able to read on end that's that's my favorite part is i don't include as many quotes i did in this book that i couldn't resist the book is also chock full of photographs that tell the story of the farm crisis of the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties two of my favorite

photos in this book are of four year old dustin kofi can you describe those photos at the role the dust and played just and i those are my favorites too he's so cute and he went along on the protest with his mother and father and grandfather i believe from western kansas i think they live around ulysses and the phone and the first thought i counted him was him lying at the feet of a bunch of people sitting in chairs there you can tell they're listening to something in the caption is that they're at a congressional hearing but it is a line across their feet you sound asleep and the other hand on a contractor and he's got a sign i can remember exactly what it says that it's something to the effect of you know american agriculture movement and it turns out after i had seen that photo i learned

that he had led his own tractor played for washington dc he pedaled in the lead of this whole line of tractors as they went through the streets of dc so that was a point of pride for them and i can't touch his mom donna and they were they were happy to share their scrapbook and their memories i think the wonderful thing about doing the research for this is connecting with the farmers who have been for years and wanted to tell the story and theres so glad to have an avenue for that and it was really magical i'm getting with lindsay metcalf sees the author of farmers unite planting a protest for fair prices though the when you wrote this book back in two thousand nineteen farmers were once again having some really tough times how is farming today different than farming back in the farm crisis of the nineteen eighties that's a great question and i feel like something's very different and some things have

not changed that much number one you don't have a problem with interest rates that they had in the late nineteen seventies you don't have a problem with oil scarcity that they had in the late nineteen seventies but we do have is everything else the prices have skyrocketed and in the back of the book i'm just gonna turn to the page really quickly so they don't get the numbers wrong i included a little graft comparisons because to me that speaks the most to happen so changed so in nineteen seventy seven if you were to buy a new combine you would pay about forty one thousand dollars in twenty nineteen when i was writing the book i call around and i looked around online and found the new combine says are about four hundred thousand to six hundred thousand ten times as much easily and you'll look next to that the graph also includes some commodity prices

so in nineteen seventy seven the average price for a bushel of wheat was two dollars and thirty three cents twenty nineteen it was four dollars and seventy cents the way people have farmed has changed so you're able to get much higher yields but not end the amount that will it profit you know enough to buy a new combine so most farmers most producers you'll find cannot afford new equipment on so i would say a lot of things have changed but a lot have stayed the same as well looking back at the nineteen eighties do you think farmers were successful in getting their message heard it they were but it's a criminal and they left the protests not having accomplished any of their goals with congress they didn't achieve parity and we still the factory farmers are some the only

people that don't set the price for their their guts but he kept at it and when they got willie nelson's attention and they they were able to have farm aid and foreign aid helped find the farmer and rancher congress where they came together informally came up with their cup congressional priorities i think that's when they really rebuilt and they change because the forties on to congress and then by the late eighties and have reagan in office and he signed a debt protection bill i believe something that was not carry it wasn't what they're looking for but it was enough to help them you know avoid foreclosure and at least keep their land so it was enough to end the farm crisis at that time i think you'll find that farmers would like more and i think there's a

lot of room to grow and of course now we're facing a lot of other problems on climate change is on the horizon and there are people thinking about carbon pricing hands noto and lots of technology improvements so there's this push pull with how things are changing but the economics have changed that much and so this is not your first buck what does farmers unite have in common with other books you've written a question and i had two other books come out they all came out in the same season so it was a debut author in fall twenty twenty and the first book that came out beatrix potter scientist and it's that picture but it about the time period when beatrix potter's studying science and mycology and she e words really invested in making a breakthrough even though she's a victorian woman and was allowed to go to school are so in a way

a hearse story to me was a story of activism in her own small way then the next book was no voice to small fourteen young americans making history and that book is the poetry anthology featuring contemporary young americans are making change in their communities and is it's a wide cross section of young people who were really inspiring and the stories are told by fourteen different poets who are at the top of their field as well so if you look at these three books you've got one guy would unite which is all stream by photos you've got no voice to smile which is poetry and beatrix potter which is a straight narrative picture but piracy they seem pretty different but sunni this the theme is people who are seeing something that they know needs to be changed and they're finding a way to do that and that inspires me endlessly i i look

for stories of people who have found ways to use the power within themselves and use their voices again empathy with lindsay metcalf sees the author of farmers unite planting a protest for fear prices it was a twenty twenty one kansas notable award winner and the book and your two others have taken you from being a debut author to being now an accomplished author congratulations winfrey think you can i get you to read an excerpt from farmers unite she were also very beginning farmers in nineteen seventy seven had a problem they were going broke crop prices tanked expenses sword for tractors fuel and land when a bushel of wheat cost me three dollars and twenty cents to race and the selling prices around to forty somethings wrong said fred bartels a colorado farmer to survive farmers that created some paid for haircuts with corn

many store grain awaiting better prices you that we started crying and i melt said marjorie sheikh where kansas whispers spread over morning coffee about a father son operations that folded not newspapers advertising six farmer auctions at the time it just kept up who would be left to feed the nation apathy is going to destroy us she first that after the fall harvest the farmers planted a plan to send in their tractors that's lindsay metcalf reading from farmers unite planting a protest for fear prices it's at twenty twenty one kansas notable award winner lindsay congratulations and thank you for joining us today thank you it's been a pleasure and kate mcintyre keep your presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas a safe bet from author interviews like press the barns and lindsay metcalf to

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