Welcome to Dumas

I ventured north past Amarillo to Dumas, Texas to meet with Dee Vaughan for my final harvest: corn. And if you think of the harvest as a giant ball, corn is this year's Cinderella.

It's mid-October, and in Texas, that usually means the corn harvest is well underway. However, corn farmers in the Panhandle are delayed getting into the fields this year.

Vaughan chalked it up to a lot of rain, and an early freeze. In Dumas, that freeze came on October 2nd—about two weeks ahead of schedule. The freeze kills the corn plant, making it more likely to fall to the ground. Vaughan explained that, ideally, farmers want to harvest their corn before the freeze to avoid yield losses from corn plants that have fallen over.

Acting quickly, he was able to salvage this year's crop before there was any significant quality or yield loss.

And while corn isn't Vaughan's only crop, he seemed a bit more concerned about the well-being of its harvest. With four other crops to tend, I asked him how much of a bearing his corn production truly has on his 7,000-acre operation, and whether a yield loss would have had a significant impact on his bottom line.

At this point, it's fair to doubt whether I'd learned anything at all on my harvest tour. I asked him a question to which I already knew the answer. In profession plagued with increasing input costs, and rapidly decreasing profit margins, a three- or four-percent loss per pound can be quite a difference to the bottom line. A difference that many farmers don't have to spare.

It's a fairly simple economic concept, but as I hope I proved, it's also one whose impact is often disregarded outside of the farming community.

Even so, why did Vaughan choose to focus more on the corn when he instead could have focused his energy on his cotton, wheat, grain sorghum, and soybean production?

Vaughan told me that even with a lower-quality grading, corn is still a high-value crop. Therefore, he'll continue to harvest what he can of it.

With that, we'd finally arrived at the farm. The combines were out, and by the looks of it, running smoothly.

Vaughan and his 84-year-old father manage the operation along with three, full-time employees. His father greeted me as he climbed off of the combine. He's a man of few words, and even though he said little to me, I had tremendous respect for him.

He's 84 and he's still farming. Yes, you read that right. He's still harvesting at 84—it was an amazing sight to witness.

"He's been farming long enough to see mules morph into GPS-guided machinery," Vaughan laughed as I marveled at his father's spirit. "These days, he doesn't do a lot in the field during the rest of the year, but he loves the harvest. He will not miss a harvest."

I asked Vaughan if he sees himself farming in 30 years.

"I hope I'm around in 30 years," Vaughan said. "Until then, I look at it this way—if I'm not farming the land, who will be?"

Vaughan has three daughters; none of whom he believes will follow in his footsteps. As for the future of the Vaughan operation, he admits there are a lot of concerns.

"There will come a point when I cannot do this all by myself," he sighed. "But the reality is that the average age of a farmer in this country is 55-years-old. A lot of kids today don't want these hours—unless, that is, these hours will reward them financially."

Vaughn's concern is a common one amongst the farming community in the United States. There is a lot of uncertainty about the future of agriculture, and each year, our farmers find themselves struggling more and more to stay afloat.

"There was a day when you could farm 160-acres and make a living. Those days are gone," Vaughan declared. "And how the times have changed."

An hour had passed, and we stepped off of the combine to survey our work. We watched a truckload of corn drive away, and I noticed that Vaughan was smiling. Ever the optimists, these farmers.

Vaughan told me he can't help but smile, because never mind the past, and regardless of the future, the harvest is the culmination of your work. Vaughan and his team had put a lot of work into this crop, and there's no shame in a little pride.

As we drove back to town, Vaughan told me that he could trace the Vaughan family roots back to the first apple orchard planted in the state of Rhode Island.

A lot of people would hear that and say, wow, that's pretty neat. But what we should be saying, what's really neat, is the story of Dee Vaughan.

Agriculture is in all of our roots. But how many of us can say that we're still doing it today?

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