Alan Guebert is an Illinois farm journalist. The following was inspired by Gene Logsdon’s 1975 Farm Journal story, “The last farmer.”
Marvin Grabpen could hardly contain his glee as he slid into the air-assisted chair of his new office. “This is what it’s all about. Mama Grabpen’s little farmboy did good.” Indeed, he had. As the day began, Grabpen was the most powerful – and one of the few remaining – farm editors in the world.
It had been a slow, 30-year climb for Grabpen until he finally cracked the alfalfa ceiling in July 2002, becoming farm management editor at Freedom to Flail, the magazine for global ag advertisers, owned by Austrian media magnate Rumpert Mudschlock.
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Once at F2F, Grabpen rose quickly. His trick was simple: Quote only mainline farm sources and never ever do any thinking for yourself.
When doing a story, Grabpen followed his little rule exclusively. He always wrote the piece first, including direct quotes, then telephoned one or two of the many grain exporter, livestock or crop groups who maintained farmers on their boards for this press-express purpose. Oh, he’d interview them, yet their answers always matched his already-written story.
It wasn’t magic. Grabpen learned early in his career that farm groups, despite passing the leadership around on a geographic and gender-correct basis, never really changed – except to shrink, of course. And cellular phones made Grabpen’s task easier than plucking boiled chickens. The doggone farmers were always within reach – be they jetting to China to sell soy sauce, cruising the Mediterranean with the olive-oil cartel, pushing pork in the Middle East, or hosting “informational” steak feeds for clucking congressmen.
On rare occasions, Grabpen telephoned his few sources on their farms. This made his job far tougher, because whenever these spokesmen were actually at home, their press agents filled the day with photo shoots and interviews for other magazines. After all, there were only so many farm sources left and the magazines had to share them.
Grabpen’s rule worked until about 2015, when his farm talkers began to die off in “tragic farm accidents,” as he dutifully reported. His best livestock spokesperson drowned in a manure spill during a safety tour with EPA officials. His corn man vaporized when the ethanol-powered pace car he was driving kissed the wall on turn three at Indy.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Grabpen’s beef guy went mad a year later; his soybean guy landed in jail after a Washington bribery scandal; and Joe Billy Hacker, the tobacco person, retired to manage an oxygen tank farm.
But Grabpen was still OK. His ace source, who Grabpen knew only by the internet alias Deep Sheep, continued to spew like a just-jostled baby. And on every topic. If Grabpen posted the word “NAFTA” on the ‘net, Deep Sheep would e-mail back a gem like: “With the peso now in its eleventh crash since 1995, the remaining 200 U.S. farmers will trade this year’s corn for Acapulco. Now all U.S. farmers can hold their winter chemical meetings where sunshine, ample tequila and good food will foster open communications.”
The seven farmers left in the Midwest? “Never in the history of this great nation have its citizens had so much food for so little cost. Efficiency: That’s the American way.”
On the demise of rural life: “The vast majority of Americans today want home-delivered pizza, cable TV and direct jet service to Disney World. What part of this do the family-farm advocates not understand?” The man – or woman, Grabpen didn’t know which – was a treasure. As long as Deep Sheep did the talking, Grabpen would do the writing, stock-option exercising, and golden parachuting. Grabpen grinned. The future of agriculture was in good hands.
