09/19/2026
1.5 million views, 1,000-plus comments from a post about $6.00 a gallon for diesel fuel, and a lot of the comments read like this. 👇
"Farmers have always complained about prices."
Well, here is the rest of the story:
I have heard that my whole life. And I want to be fair, because there is some truth in it.
But I want to tell you what that complaining actually was.
Ask a farmer in a good year how he is doing. He will tell you he is just trying to get by. One day at a time. Can't complain.
That is not exactly the truth.
He had a good year. He made money. He just does not know how to say that out loud. Every farmer I know was raised believing that bragging on a good year is a fast way to lose the next one. So he says "just getting by," and what he means is "we did alright, and I would rather not say it any louder than that."
That is not complaining. That is humility. And it is most of what you have been hearing for fifty years.
Now ask that same man in a bad year. He will tell you the exact same thing. Just trying to get by.
That time he means it.
Same words. Same man, two entirely different meanings.
Here is where we are now. When a farmer tells you it is bad right now, it is not humility and it is not habit. He is telling you the arithmetic does not work. He has run it and it does not come out.
And the next thing people say is, well, do something else.
I want to explain why that sentence does not mean anything out here.
If you work a job in town and it goes bad, you put in an application somewhere else. Maybe two weeks between checks. It is a hard few months and then you are on the other side of it.
A farm does not work like that.
To quit, you have to sell. Not one thing. Everything. The equipment, the tools, the trucks, the semis, the trailers, the tractors, the implements. And the land last. Always the land last, because that one was never really yours. It came from somebody, or was bought with the profits of a lifetime of hard work, and it was supposed to go to somebody. "Legacy."
That is not a weekend. That is a year, maybe two, of auctions and listings and men walking your place looking at what you built and deciding what it is worth to them.
And you had better get your number. A lot of it has a note against it. You can sell out and still owe the bank. Men have done it.
Then it is finished. You do not get back in. Nobody starts a cattle operation at sixty with what is left after the sale. The door locks behind you.
So here is what is running through a lot of men's minds right now, and most of them have not said it out loud to anybody, including their wife.
What if I quit?
How would I even quit?
What does it look like when the sale bill goes up with my name on it?
What will people in town think?
Can I even clear the bank?
What do I tell my family when we move off this place and I go get a job in town?
Those are not complaints. That is a man doing math at two in the morning.
So the next time you hear a farmer say he is just trying to get by, listen to how he says it.
For fifty years that meant he was doing alright and was too humble to say so.
Right now, a lot of them mean it.
— Mitchell Family Farms
