Spirit in Action
Farmer & Union Solidarity
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ My guest today for Spirit in Action is Tony Schultz, a farmer and activist from Central Wisconsin. He was one of a number of farmers who went to Madison to support the unions and other activists demonstrating at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Tony spoke with fire, insight, and compassion, and that's how he caught my eye. Tony Schultz and his partner, Kat, are also Stony Acres Farm, CSA. So, I'll be talking to Tony about CSAs, what they are, and how they fit into Tony's outlook on politics and the world. We'll talk to Tony in a minute, but first, let's listen to him on March 12th on a windy day and at a massive demonstration in Madison, Wisconsin. We know that we're all in this together. We go up together, but we go down together the way I see it as we got two choices. I can have my unions busted and stand alone and be pitted against my neighbor in a desperate and unequal economy, or we can come together to say, "This is what our families need. This is what our communities need. This is what it just wages. This is what democracy looks like." Tony Schultz now joins us from Stony Acres Farm in Athens, Wisconsin. Tony, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thanks for having me. You are quite a Spirit in Action. I saw via YouTube the talk that you gave down Madison back on the 12th of March. It was awesome. Were you a lead organizer and getting the tractors down there? Yeah, I actually was one of the people who belonged to an organization based over the Twin Cities called the Land Stewardship Project, which deals with a number of issues regarding sustainable agriculture, basically. It is more Minnesota-centric, but it has a lot of members in Western Wisconsin. The membership director Mike McMahon called us out because we had been active in different issues, fighting factory farms, promoting sustainable agriculture, community-supported agriculture. He just wanted to get our sense of what was going on, what he thought the Land Stewardship Project could do. As we were talking, I said, we've got to have a show of solidarity. We've got to put the iconic image of the family farmer from Wisconsin. People around the country think of Wisconsin. I think they think of Little Red Barn and Still, even though this historical memory and identification is being lost as the agricultural system changes. I said, well, I know that Joel Greeno was trying to get a permit to bring his tractor to a previous rally that the Teachers Union had organized, and he wanted to have a tractor there at that time. From that point, I called Family Farm Defenders, which is an organization that we are on the board of based out of Madison, Wisconsin. It's also a national group. I said, "John Peck, the Executive Director, let's have solidarity rally. Farmers supporting workers, farmers talking about why this budget hurts them as well. Let's get some tractors up on the square or cows or whatever." He said, "Yep, Joel was actually working on getting the permit. So Joel Greeno does sort of tractor events three or four times a year where he does a hayride or parades or something like that." He was anxious to take his Alice Chalmers to the Capitol for this event for that reason, but also as a show of solidarity. I said, "Let's get on it and we'll start organizing this." So, a half an hour later, Cass posted on Facebook, tractor Cade, farmer labor tractor Cade, who we held at the Capitol Saturday at noon. She just put that. We didn't have the permit yet, but she just posted it. Within two days, we had 4,000 RSVPs because words spread fast with social media. It mushroomed from there, and the tractor Cade had over 50 tractors participating with farmers all over the state. We had a good range of tractors. So, from a garden tractor all the way up to 300 horsepower double dual New Holland tractor. So, it just tells you it showed a good range, a good cross-section of some family farmers in the state of Wisconsin. And I felt that I was speaking for about 100,000 people. By the time the senators came back, I think there was at least 200,000 people. The Capitol, you could not move around the streets. It was an incredible and inspirational moment. It's motivated a lot of great political action work in its wake. So, it was one of the most significant moments of my life. You know, I played the clip from your speech at the beginning of this interview. Could you fill in for people what the connection is, why the farmers, the unions, why that's a strong bond? Because I think a lot of people, as you mentioned, really don't think about that today. I think that's been lost in the transition of our society. Why is it so important that the two stand together? Why is there a natural affinity, a common ground to be held? Well, for me, there's two explanations, or two answers to that question. One is the historical answer. And the other is fundamental reason of what we have in common. So, first of all, I give a little history lesson in that talk. The history lesson had to do with what is commonly known as the populist movement in the United States, which reached its peak in about 1890, 1896. If you think really hard back to your high school or college history courses, you remember William's Jennings Bryan Cross of Gold speech, or the farmers clamoring for free silver. But the populist movement was really the, I think, the most progressive, broad movement that attempted an electoral shift in our country. And it had to do with farmers who were the majority of the population at that time. And workers in the emerging industrial economy coming together to support things that benefited the common man. It's the common man versus the elite. And I like to focus that on the common man in an economic sense versus the elite, because there are all kinds of elitisms in our society that are exploited in the culture war. So, like, for instance, Bill O'Reilly talks about how educated liberals who drink lattes are elite and working class people who drink coffee, and he donuts to prevent those educated liberals. And so, I think that the real bond of connection is between the common man, common person economically, and against the economic elite. So, those who dominate the economy, who dominate and control are politics through the corruption of their campaign contribution. Farmers, like workers, are working people that don't have a lot of power individually in the economy. But when they come together through a union, through collective action, they can exercise power that can transform society, make it more broadly just, more egalitarian and more accessible and representative of the common person's interest. And so, farmers, even though we own farms in acreage, which workers may not, most farmers sell a commodity to a marketplace. And just like a worker who receives a wage that they don't determine, a farmer receives a price that's controlled by Wall Street or the Chicago board of trade or agribusiness corporations like Cardio or Conagra or Bean Foods in the state. And so, we're getting a price for our milk in the state that is like right now averaging about $15 per hundred pounds of milk, but it costs about $19 to produce that hundred pounds of milk. And it doesn't need the cost of our production. And it's not because we don't work hard enough, it's because that price is controlled by those who dominate the economy. And so, just like when workers have to give concessions, when workers don't receive a wage increase, even though there's been productivity gains in the last 30 years, we don't control the price, workers don't control their wage. We need to come together to exercise some, for that, collectively withhold what is important to the economy, our labor, or our product. And by collectively doing that, we gain power for the common person. That's the fundamental reason, the fundamental thing we have in common. And those are powerful reasons, and they make great sense to me. You mentioned in there that you were talking about, that Bill O'Reilly, when he talks about common person, he's not identifying the same common person you are. I think Bill O'Reilly thinks that the Tea Party is the common person. And certainly, there are people who think of themselves as just Main Street USA, who identify with the Tea Party, or identify, have been down at the demonstrations in Madison, trying to defend unions. Are they both equally the people of the United States? Oh, every person is valuable. Every person has an intrinsic value that I respect. I think here's a difference between what I consider the populist movement, although the Tea Party has this sort of thought of populism, this claim to populism. It calls itself a movement. But the Tea Party, the interest that they represent, work to conserve and enhance power for people who have power, for the dominant, the elite. And the populist movement, or progressive, or people who are the less in this country, work to build and broaden power with people who have been excluded from power. So workers are excluded from power. They can't determine their wage. Farmers are excluded from power. They can't determine their price. Women are excluded from power. We live in a patriarchy. LGBT people are excluded from power. They can't get married to people who they love. These are all ways that people are excluded from power. The Tea Party, to me, when I see working class person in the Tea Party, I'm disappointed. I feel like the reason that Tea Party gained a lot of traction is because there is righteous anger out there. People are upset with how this economy is serving them. A working class, people are upset with how this economy is serving them. And so the Tea Party movement was formed. People participated in it for that. It was formed of the AstroTurf movement saying, "We don't like Obama. We don't like Obama care." But people populated it because there is anger. I can think of some of my neighbors who have gone to Tea Party rallies. There is real anger that's motivating people, common working folks to go to that. That needs to be addressed by those who are politicians or who run the economy. But their anger is being funneled, I think, to serve the interests of elites who dominate the economy, not serve the interests of working middle class people who create the wealth in this economy and who are many of whom are currently out of a job. So I just feel like the Tea Party works against the interests. Their political positions work against the interests of working people. And it serves the Koch brothers who fund their rallies. It serves those who dominate the economy. The Tea Party is opposed to President Obama wanting to tax the rich. Well, I don't think there's a more clear issue in our gambit of political issues. And it says you're with the wealthy or you're with the poor working class and progressive, you can tax the progressive taxation. If you tax the rich, you are using that money to serve education or whatever we feel we need to serve, with not everything I agree with. But you're taking from people who dominate and you're giving to the broad society. If you tax the poor, you're taking from the poor. And so I think that's very clear, but the Tea Party is opposed to that. And so if they're really for the common angry working person, then you would tax the rich. But the Tea Party is opposed to that because the agenda is controlled by those who dominate. You've mentioned a number of issues which may or may not be the common issues of the family farmer in Wisconsin. One of the accusations you said that Bill O'Reilly makes is about these latte drinking liberals. I want to know, are you a latte drinking liberal? Or are you just a third generational farmer living in the central part of Wisconsin? Is there any, is there any discord between those two things? There is that the cultural, you know, like, so people who drink a latte, they cost three dollars at a coffee shop as opposed to 50 cents at the cafe, at the cafe in town. That's a symbol of elitism. Now I'd say a major thing, but a lot of people see every day. And so it engenders a little resentment, then that resentment is amplified by light-wing voices, one to create wedges between working people. So as a teacher, right, for instance, and Athens, where I'm from, has a college degree and has someone exposed them to drinking a latte in college, and they drink that in front of, you know, a working class person in Athens, then it's a little symbol of resentment, right, that a person can harbor. I think it's kind of petty, but if you want to know where I'm coming from, I was born raised on a 50-pound dairy farm, which is like that, which is, I think, symbolized by the little red bond on a license plate. And we didn't have political conversations growing up, essentially. I was apolitical. I thought I was going to be a basketball player, you know, and I worked hard and bailed hay and milk cows on the farm. But when I was a senior in high school, I came home from football practice, and my father told us that we were going to sell the cows. And I was decimated by this because I thought I was going to take on the farmer. I'm going to be a farmer for the rest of my life, and this is what people do. Your grandfather starts a farmer, he hands it to his father, he hands it to you, you're going to hand it to the your son or daughter. This is how it is in Athens, Wisconsin. So I was decimated by that. I cried and begged. The decision had been made, not necessarily by him, because we were still getting up at 5.30 to do chores, working hard every day, and we had a good herd average and all of that, but the price wasn't there. The decision was made by the direction of agricultural economy. And so selling our cows made me incredibly angry and politicized me. And because we didn't have cows, my mom said go to college, and I went to UW South for two years and played basketball there with them. I when I read things about the history and the economy and why, what was happening to agriculture? And I saw an answer to this. I became aware of commodity markets are controlled and the trend in agriculture historically knows get bigger, get out and factory farms versus family farms. And I transferred to Madison to get an education degree, and I continued to study the economy. And I formed a political critique based on that experience that has me identified, now you said I'm out loud to drinking liberal. I don't identify as a liberal in the sense that I do identify myself as on the left, someone who seeks to build and broaden power with people who have been excluded from power. So I see that I have been excluded from power, the power of having something of my own, a form of economic empowerment, an independent space in an interdependent world, the family farm has been taken from me, I was taken from me, just like wages have been reduced to working people or jobs shipped out of the country to exploit someone who will work for less, or women who receive 70 cents on the dollar for doing the same job. So then I identify with all of those things. I view anyone struggling for equality, for justice, to build power when they are excluded from power. I identify with all those movements, the labor movement, these workers struggling for a living wage to improve their lives, the women's movement, the feminist movement, women struggling for equal rights, the environmental movement, you know, because we all live downstream and people who are working class are going to suffer most from environmental degradation. The civil rights movement, people of color struggling for rights to not be treated as second class citizens, the LGBT movement to not be treated as second class citizens, I see all of that as the same thing. People working to build and broaden power with people who have been excluded from power historically. And so that's why I identify with it. I have educated myself about it, but I did not come from an educated background. I was politicized by what I feel like capitalism did to agriculture. That's where I gained my consciousness from, and that's how I identify today. And that's why I gave that speech. Why did you go back to the farm, Tony? What was it that led you to go back to farming? Is it just because you were washed out as a basketball? All this learning that you had, couldn't you have been the next Barack Obama? You could have been the progressive answer to Glenn Beck. You know, that's Glenn Beck and this is a form of entertainment. I wanted to participate in movements. I'm inspired by movements. One movement that I saw happening, I wanted the organization that I joined with family-con defenders in college, and the movement they were involved in, was not only seeking to defend and preserve and enhance the family farm, but more specifically the sustainable agriculture movement. And so coming from a farm, I saw the organic movement, grazing movement, sustainable agriculture as something that people were excited about, and as a way of saving them my family farm, basically. My dad was about to sell the farm to someone who is consolidating acreage, and I said, "Don't do that." I had asked him to buy cows for, and I would help him farm full-time. We would make it work, but the sustainable egg movement presented a viable economic alternative, something that could, I could swing it financially with, if I'd move home. I taught for three years afterwards to pay off my college debt because I had an education degree, and because I wanted to be an educator, and I thought, "Well, what am I going to do with a college degree if I move home?" I thought, "I guess I can envision myself moving back to Athens, too, for some reason." Even though I could have easily ended up in the city somewhere. But when the opportunity arose to buy the farm, and I had a little capital saved, you know, a couple thousand dollars to make a down payment, I thought I could make a CSA work. And then I met my partner at Becker, who is very skilled in horticulture. She's from New York City, originally, in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but she's always daydreamed about having a farm. It's a whole another story. I told her I had a farm, and the romantic idea of the family farm became all the more romantic. And so we decided to move back home and go for it. And the first year we just practiced growing stuff, so that at a farmer's market, we used that to build up on our market. The next year was the same year that Michael Pollan wrote the omnivore dilemma, and CSA's were booming and still are around the country, and farmers' markets are booming. And we just wanted to have 50 members, but we got 72 and had to cut that off, and we doubled in size the next year. And so we did it at a good time, historically, and it's still a good time, local food, and still a growing movement. So that's how I ended up back at the farm. I believe in the family farm. You know, I believe in the economic democracy of the family farm. I want family farms to continue. The community I grew up in offered me a beautiful construct of setting to raise a family. It offered this form of economic democracy. It offered a means of personal economic empowerment, and it offered me a chance to be in my home with my family. Talk a little bit about CSA's. It's something that didn't exist as far as I know 20 years ago, or it was so rudimentary that we didn't know about it. How does it work for you? How many CSA's are there in your area? Are you competing? Is every family farm turning into a CSA? Not every family farm is turning into a CSA. No, definitely not. There are many other avenues for family farmers, but CSA is how I chose to sort of reinvent the family farm from a conventional commodity producing farm to a local direct market operation that was totally rooted in selling to my local community. CSA, community supported agriculture. They're also called subscription farming or farm shares. Basically, the way it works is that you subscribe to my farm or a CSA in your area, like you would subscribe to a magazine. Instead of receiving a magazine, you get a box of fresh seasonal, almost always organic produce, whether it's certified or not, but almost every, I can't think of any CSA that is not used organic methods. You receive that every week throughout the growing season. Now, in our case, we have a 20-week growing season, so from the beginning of June, the end of October, you get a box every Thursday with what's in season. You get at least seven items. We average about 10 items, until in the spring, you get some more greens, like lettuce and bok choy and then some scallions and parrots out of our hoop house. As the season goes on, the tomatoes come on, the eggplant, the cucumbers, the zucchinis, they take a few potatoes, and then a later part of the year through vegetables, root of egg and turnips and beets and potatoes. Then you also get a newsletter every week that says, "What's in your box?" How to deal with it, some recipes, some news from the farm. We like to write about agricultural topics. One of the things I'm writing right now is the history of CSA for early newsletter. The history of the CSA movement started in Japan and in Switzerland and Germany in the '60s when mothers were concerned about the lack of farmland and the lack of fresh food, because of that farmland that was being gobbled up by development, went directly to farmers who place orders with them for the farm season, say, grow food for us. That spread, and it took on several different forms. Sometimes the farmer would be hired by people and they would be a farm manager of land. Sometimes it's a farmer like us, a small business, marketing to people who buy shares in advance. Sometimes it's a co-op of farmers who bring different products together that they specialize in and sell it to a local market through shares. This spread to the United States in the '80s. I think Dan Dunter, a CSA farmer near the Twin Cities told me that he saw a story in organic gardening, the Rodeo publication, in 1982 that said, "Subscription farming." The story was about that. That inspired him and he was one of the pioneers in 1989, but in the early '80s, a woman named Van N, I think, started a CSA in the States. There had not been CSA's before that time. And now, according to the website, Local Harvest, which is just a clearing house of CSA's, and you put your zip code in localharvest.org and it says, "What's CSA's and what local food is there in your area that you can buy from?" There are at least 4,000 CSA's in the country, Wisconsin, and especially Madison and the Twin Cities, our hotbeds of CSA activity. It's a growing movement that has created space for many family farms to continue to exist, to get rid of the cyclical debt that plagues many family farms, to connect directly with eaters in their communities, to have people come out to the farms. We have three farm events on our farm, including, I think, the best barn dance in the state, if not the country, at our farm, with local beer and local organic herders and a great local band from WAFSA. We dance right away and we have these farmer bands, some kids play outside of the barn, and it serves so many people on so many levels. It diversifies people's diet. It creates biodiversity in agricultural settings because I have to grow many things. I can't rely on monocultures. I think CSA, well, not a conventional way of getting food and has limitations like you get what you get in your box. This is generally a good thing. You're getting a diversity of things, but you are getting what you get. The seasons are somewhat limited. I'd like to have a longer season. I'd like to have storage shares and through the winter, but this is where we're at right now with our production capacity. But CSA's have boomed because they've offered a lot of things to a lot of people, farmers and eaters, and shortened the food chain in a process that has a lot of good ramifications as well, environmentally and nutritionally. How much is the share for your CSA? You have different levels of shares. I just, in general, I want to get an idea of what CSA's across the country are like. We've been a member of a CSA for a number of years, have a number of friends who have them, so I'm aware of what happens to us. Is this enough food to feed enough family? Is it their vegetable portion or what all do you include in your boxes? Well, you know, in a feeder family, it's totally dependent, I think, on how many vegetables you eat. Like, I feel we don't live a sedentary lifestyle. We're working a pretty physically demanding job, working the farm in the summertime. So we could go through a CSA box in the meals of one day, you know, throw some stuff in the omelet during breakfast, and then have a stir fry for lunch, and then some vegetable, pasta for dinner, and, you know, we could chop up and eat a CSA box, probably, in a day, a half share that we give to people. But some people, you know, could eat, like, one over the course of a week. And some people say to me that it's too much. In fact, sometimes we lose people because they say, "Oh, we just didn't know what to do with all this stuff." But we have two different shares and other share options. We have a full share, which is a three quarter bushel box and a half share, which is a half bushel box. And it's roughly about, half share is roughly about 60 percent of what you would get in the full share box. The full share cost $500 for the season. The half share cost $315, about $15 and a half dollars per week. In terms of a cost comparison, there have been studies at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and UW-Madison and the Leopold Center in Iowa that says that the CSA is a competitive with other markets for fresh produce. And some members may realize significant financial savings as well. We did our own cost comparison for an upcoming newsletter that we're writing about. We compared a storage share last fall with the price of in-season conventional produce bought at the most popular grocery store in Wausa, which is our main market. The cost of the CSA box was 68 percent of the cost of in-season conventional produce. And so sometimes people think of CSA and organic food as like a foodie elitist thing, but the price of our food is definitely below the price of in-season conventional food that you would receive at a grocery store. Now you might not eat parsnips or sunchokes or celeriac, which are some of the things that we put in the storage share. But it was definitely less expensive for a fresher, more nutritionally dense calories that would diversify your diet. On our CSA farm members, they share the full cost of food production and local sustainable agriculture. Now the CSA movement in general aims to educate consumers at the supermarket prices do not reflect the real cost of an industrial agricultural system. So we're constantly talking about this in our newsletter. These costs include packaging, waste disposal, soil erosion, groundwater contamination, pollution caused by long-distance transport, exploited farm workers, and government subsidies, according to the Conservative Heritage Foundation, cost the average American household $1,805 of taxes over the course of the last decade, and primarily benefit industrial factory farms agriculture. All those costs, when you buy something in the grocery store, may seem hidden or external, as economists call it, from what you pay at the grocery store, but they're very much a part of the cost of your food and the cost of having this type of food system that CSA negates almost entirely. So we're not only cheaper in a straight-up economic comparison. We don't have all these externalities factored in to the cost of our tomatoes or turnips. So people don't have to pay upfront for their cancer care that they're going to get from eating commercial pesticides or whatever else is in the commercial foods. You're saying your food is cheaper, 60-some percent, compared to regular commercial, or is it compared to organic? No, that's compared to in-season conventional produce, and so not organic produce. So in-season conventional produce, and now that's because all the food dollar goes to us, and the eater receives all of the value of the produce. We don't have to pay distributors, trucking companies, advertisers, and Conagros, lobbyists, and so that's the main way that we can be below the retail cost of in-season conventional produce. Now, other CSA's will be more expensive. We feel that part of our mission is to make sure that everyone can have access to healthy, organic food, that it's not exclusive, that it's not elitist, and that's one of the wraps on organic food is that when you buy it in the grocery store, it's 20 to 100% more expensive in-season conventional produce. I do not want our CSA to be elitist, so that's why we have the pricing that we do for about $15 a week or $23 a week for the full share. We do suggest that people pay upfront. Most people do, but we also have something called community share, where people will buy a full share at a reduced price, but work on the farm for a day, so they help us with like some busy days of harvesting, and we get to know them, and it's a great way to spend time together, working together, and otherwise monotonous, laborious tasks like weeding, or packing, or something like that, and we have a worker share where people can work fully in exchange three or four hours a week in exchange for their full share. Then we also have a share share program, which is sort of like an internal redistribution system. You know, wealthier members can give $25 more to the cost, and then we put that money together. We also have a fundraiser or two over the course of the season that goes into our share share fund. The family says, "I'd like to be part of the CSA, but I can't afford it." We subsidize or fully cover the cost of the CSA, and we've covered about five or six shares annually through the share share fund, and we take WIC and food dollars, and so we try every way possible to get CSA to people who might feel excluded from it. You know, it's difficult for people to pay before the season, so we can buy our seeds and stuff, and not go into debt over that, but we allow people to date checks, we allow people to have payment plans, we allow people to pay, and you go. And so we are very flexible with that, even though we, you know, we would like the check before, because it allows us to deal with the cost that we incur before the season. This sounds like great work that you're doing. You said already, it's hard work, hard physical work. You're out there. Obviously, you have a strong calling as a teacher or someone to get the ideas out there. Is this the right balance for you? And how do your parents end up seeing you doing farming following up on what they've been doing? Well, that's the second question. First, when I brought this idea back to my father, the first time, I remember I had a little blue pamphlet on what is CSA, and I got it from the info shop in Madison and family farm defenders I'll put it out. And I brought it back and he was like, "Huh?" And he kind of ignored it. And then I did an internship on an organic dairy in Hillsborough that was very inspirational on the Goodman's farm. And I saw that, and I called, telling him all about it, and he was like, "Oh, organic." That means what? You put more manure on stuff, you know? And so he kind of had this reaction to it, like, "It's not real." Or just don't farm kind of a fan of the feeling I got. A lot of my neighbors, too, when I don't introduce myself as an organic farmer to my neighbors because I feel like they feel it's another form of where them are like, "Oh, am I doing something wrong?" You know? So I didn't talk about it like that. But when we started doing it, and when my dad saw how I was able to have a quick teaching and farm full-time, because it was working, and I was paying for everything my family needed, and I could take a couple months off in the winter time. I still have to do chores and stuff like that. But basically, you know, not these own tents. I could take an app. I could play with my babies and have a nice family life. He has been totally into it. He's been incredibly supportive. He helps make sure all our hay gets made. He's primarily responsible for the maple syrup that we produce. You know, my parents could not have been more supportive of what we're doing. And as a family farm, you know, we're actually very dependent on them to help get this worked on to watch our babies in the summertime to give us support to make it financially possible to buy the farm in the first place, which would not have been possible, I don't think, getting a loan from a bank in this area, and a bank not being familiar with CSA generally. And so we have a land contract with my parents that made it possible. They got a lower cost up front, and they capture all the interests of our payments to them. So they've been incredibly supportive, and farming is good for me. I'd like to write more or do some more hell-raising and more activism, but it's not so much the farm, because I'm not a farmer. It's having a young family. And so that takes up a lot of time playing with my boys, watching them on kind of a stay-at-home dad in the winter, my partner, Kat. She still teaches. She's an adjunct professor at UWNC, which is a two-year university, and so I'm like a stay-at-home dad more during her school year. And in the spring, it's hectic, and but we make it work, and we get a baby fitter a couple days a week, and so I can get some seedlings in the ground. If you just tuned in, you're listening to an interview with Tony Schultz. He spoke down at Madison, Wisconsin on March 12th. He was part of the farmer movement, the tractor kid that joined the demonstrations. I happen to be there on that day as well. This is spirit and action, and that's why I have Tony here, because he is such a clear spirit and action. It is a Northern spirit radio production, and our website is Northern Spirit Radio. Not Southern, not body, but Northern spirit radio. Come to our site, post comments, list all our programs the last five and half years, and find links to people like those at Stony Acres Farm. Stony Acres Farm is where Tony and his partner Katrina produced some great food for their area right there in central Wisconsin. I want to come back, Tony, to some of the stuff you were talking about earlier. One of the thoughts that was going through my head as you were speaking is how successfully I guess the rich people have pitted the poor people against the poor people, or the middle class against the middle class. Do you see that happening? Oh, absolutely. There's a saying that's kind of paraphrased from history, but I think I heard in a movie called "The Gangs of New York," a Martin Scorsese film, but they have this scene in New York with wealthy elites talking about the immigrant class and how they see the immigrant class organizing for democracy, and for recognition as citizens in this country that they've come to, Irish American. The working class are playing, this is like a rich man's mansion, not a billiard's table, and one of them says, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." You know, that's what I, when I hear Rush Limbaugh and I see my neighbors listening to Rush Limbaugh or to lend back, you know, these are people just like me, and they work for a living, sort of a small farmer, or my mailman, you know, I wonder why? Why are you eating this up? But there is real anger, and the people are disconnected from organization that represents their interest, and so this is still devoid as a means of expressing that real and legitimate anger, and it's been misdirected. And there's another quote that says, "If you get them asking the wrong questions, it doesn't matter what the answers are." So I see that happening a lot. I see a major part of the right strategy, or the economic elite strategy, has been to use wedge issues in our society, and so use like abortion, for instance, and to say working class people, you shouldn't vote with your union, you should vote for this, you should act in this way because they support abortion, and you don't support abortion, and the latte liberal, you know, like you should hate these teachers and Athens that have health insurance, you don't have health insurance. That's not a wedge issue, but I see wedge issues have guns around here, and so they want to take your guns away. Well, working class people who don't have a lot of power around here, this is what I see, and I hope I'm not, I don't sound arrogant for this, my analysis, you're a working class person who doesn't have a lot of power, and you don't have a lot of connection to a source of organized power. Buying a gun and holding a gun is an incredibly powerful feeling, you know, this is a powerful and amazing tool, and to hold it, and then if someone say, oh, they're going to take your guns away, Obama wants to take your guns away, and then that person votes for a party that says, we'll protect your guns, but we don't care if you have a job or not, we don't care if that job provides for your family, we don't care if it's a just wage, that shares in the wealth that you create, those questions aren't discussed, they're debated, that person has been wedged off from their fundamental economic interest, and wish I could say something, it'd be bold or act in your economic interest, I think that would, that would be, that's the act, that's the the political action to take for going to have the type of world that I want to live in, you know, just act in your economic interest, and when you do that and you follow through on that, you realize that we have an incredibly common interest, to have control over our lives, to have a beautiful and constructive setting to raise a family, to be able to participate in our economies and democracies with real equality and freedom, to understand that we are interdependent, that one person's life is totally connected to another person, and even if it doesn't affect you directly, it affects you indirectly, and so I hope people can see through the wedge and just respect your neighbor as an act on behalf of your neighbors and love that neighbor as myself, right, you know, I'm not religious, but I, that's the golden rule, and I wish people could adhere to that and not be stripped off, and it presses me when I see these wedge issues have such an effect, and not that they're not issues, but they're issues that divide us, not allow us to recognize what we have so fundamentally in common. Since you brought it up, let's talk about the area of religion and/or spirituality. From all that you just talked about, I see you as a wonderful preacher. Of course, you're not part of some structured religion is what I, the implication I've heard also is that your religion is the earth and your experience of the good things in life, a whole community together. What is your history with religion? What spiritual ideas do you have? And one reason I bring this up, I'm almost finished with a book called American Grace, and it talks about how religion unites and divides us in this country, and those wedge issues got talked about in their abortion and homosexuality, two primary ones. Religion did not divide the nation back 40 years ago. That is to say liberals were religious and conservatives were religious, and the social gospel was still very active. Religion was doing a lot of good in the world, and not being used as a tool to pit us against one another. Definitely, I, well, I was raised Catholic, and I had no idea of this growing up, but my priest at St. Anthony's here in Athens, father growth, definitely had an understanding of liberation theology and social gospel, like you said, and I remember going to extra sort of church events that he held the form on like, what can we do about poverty? You know, as a child, my mom took me to some of them, and the Catholic position on wanting to end poverty and seeing poverty as a problem with our human condition is something that I'm definitely influenced by. I have since gone away from the Catholic church because I felt like, you know, God has kind of been portrayed, especially in politics, is like this boogie man who's going to get you, and I don't want that to be used in that way. I don't know if there's some power beyond us or what I can't explain it so officially, I guess, I'm agnostic because to me, that's just the most logical thing is I don't know if a God exists or not, but I see how especially mega churches use this, and it sickens me, and how the fear, a fear of God is used to direct people or to cause people to say God hates home, you know, thinks that homosexuality is evil and then how can you not connect that to the person who is homosexual and so that it's like it's used to create this hate to consume people's hate and to divide people, but I also understand that no one is omniscient, I'm not omniscient, I don't know everything, I can only rationalize my actions so far and questions about them will always exist so I come to understand that faith, you know, having faith in how we feel is a natural condition, now it has to be critical and we shouldn't simply accept things, we should question things and meditate on things and consider the positions of other people, but ultimately when I take an action, you know, it can only ask so many questions about it, but I have to do something, I'm doing something all the time and that is based on my faith and what I believe in based on what I can observe in my history and some of the things that guide my actions are a belief in the goodness of human beings and so on, I had to like do an MPR this I believe it would be to say that I believe in the goodness of human beings, so I'm not going to act out of the potential for human beings to do evil which we can, I'm going to try and act even though I don't do this all the time in the center but I'm going to try and act on the basis of the goodness of human beings and so what is the potential good that we can do together or the potential good that we can take or make or create together and then I also act on and the political thought and my politics are riddled with questions all the time but I believe that acting to broaden power, standing with the poor working class, the middle class, people of color, women, I feel like working to improve the human condition by building power so people can have control over their lives and act and interdependent and solidaristic way in a community is something that guides my action and this is all this very highfalutin, I know I don't act as much as I should in this way either but those are things that inform my own religion, my own faith I guess, the goodness of human beings and to broaden power for people. And the way that I would say it as a Quaker is that there's that of God and all and that what we want to do is lift that up and if you stare at the bad things which are certainly out there we don't want to be Pollyannaish but if you stare at the bad things you tend to make them grow it's that what you pay attention to and feed that grows. So obviously I think you're aiming in the right direction and I don't really care whether you call it a God or what other names you use for it obviously you're putting your life at service to the greater good and that counts a lot in my book. Yeah I have a kind of a lot of my neighbors around me are playing closed people and so some are Mennonite, some are German Baptist, some are Amish and that's settled into some of these family farms that have gone under the Amish and Mennonite have taken them up because the infrastructure is there and they're more willing to exploit themselves more and also they don't have some of the expenses that Englishmen do like computers and all of that and so they have a can live a narrower margin but there's another neighborhood here they come for the church bathrooms and they're playing clothes and they adhere to some of these things but they're an evangelical apostolic faith which means that they're playing clothes but they also evangelize where Mennonite and Amish do not evangelize and so I had dinner with them and because they're also vegetable farmers and he has a sort of market garden fruit farm stand right on highway 97 about five minutes and he was trying to give me believe in in God and one of my favorite questions for people is who you know evangelize to me his I say what is God and I act like I've never heard that word before because they're using it sort of as this club like well we have to believe in God and God and so and I see that and how some Negatured people use it as a way of like saying oh my god there's this big scary man in the sky and he has been a punished a crap out of you with you don't act in this way you know and so that to me is something I'm very alienated by and so whenever someone says that I act like I don't know what they're talking about and I say what is God and I try to force them to explain that and that's just a little I don't know maybe that's mean of me to do but I think evangelizing mean in that sense in that way I'm honest discussion is enlightening and great but I don't know if they're gonna because they want me to join their religion I say well why don't you join my religion in secular Marxism you know why don't you join mine why don't I make an assumption about what you should do and you should join my religion why do you think you have to get me so I just uh that's how I feel about that well like I said for me the proof is in the fruits of one's actions and having seen you galvanize people when you were down in Madison seeing how your CSA nurtures the community around you and seeing how the way that you and your partner live and how Stony Acres Farms transforms the world that for me is the fruit that proves that the root is good in what you're doing I want to thank you for joining me for spirit and action I want you to go out there and do more good in the world I look forward to reading a number of your upcoming books I'm sure you'll have them won't you well right now it's just newsletters you can go online at stonyacresfarm.net and read our newsletters some of them are about how to preserve zucchini but others are more substantial like how CSAs can create community or can organic feed the world or why we started this farm and so yeah I'd start with newsletters I hope someday to write a book but I'm not disciplined there's not enough time to do it right now well I'm sure your books will be great when you get around writing them but in the meantime keep up the great activism and the nurture of the world through your CSA and the gift of parenting and partnering that you're doing in your family thanks for joining me for spirit and action thanks for having me it's helmet a great video show our guest today has been Tony Schultz one of the farmer activists who participated in the march 12 tractor-cade in support of unions down in Madison, Wisconsin he and his partner Kat and their kids of course are stony acres farm csa in Athens, Wisconsin find the link to them on my northern spirit radio dot o-r-g let's go out today with a little bit of Pete Seger's version of solidarity forever when the unions inspiration through the workers blood shall run there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun yet what horse on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one but the union makes us strong solidarity forever solidarity forever solidarity forever for the union makes us strong it is we who plow the prairies built the cities where they trade dug the mines and built the workshops endless miles of railroad laid now we stand out cast and starving mid the wonders we have made but the union makes us strong solidarity forever the theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson this spirit in action program is an effort of northern spirit radio you can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org thank you for listening i am your host mark helps me and i welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action with every voice with every song we will move this world along with every voice every song we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo ♪ Come on, we're healing ♪