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