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Betting the Farm With Beth Hoffman

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re speaking with Beth Hoffman, author of “Bet the Farm.” Before coming to farming, Hoffman worked as a journalist covering food systems and agriculture. She’s also worked as an Associate Professor for the University of San Francisco. When she and her husband got the opportunity to move to his family’s cattle farm in Iowa and begin farming, she decided to take the plunge and begin working firsthand in the agricultural systems she’d spent years writing about. “I covered a lot of farms, I’d been on a lot of farms but I’d never actually done the farming myself,” said Hoffman. “There’s a real mythology around farming and homesteading and it’s going to be, you know, really back to the land and getting your hand in the dirt and that kind of thing.” As Hoffman and her husband settled into farming, they found themselves dealing the same big issue many farmers face: the challenging finances that come with working in agriculture. “The economics of farming was something that I didn’t really know much about. And I learned. We learned very quickly even before we moved out, just kind of doing spreadsheets and looking at the kind of business side of it,” Hoffman said. “It’s very, very difficult to make a living on a farm no matter what you do, no matter kind of farming.” Hoffman realized that financial challenges were a commonality among most farmers and was inspired to write a book about her journey into agriculture. “Bet the Farm” not only covers the economics of farming, it also tackles environmental and cultural aspects of farming in the U.S.