Questions to Ask Farmers in an Interview
Questions for a student, reporter, podcaster or researcher sitting down with a working farmer, covering how the operation runs, what the year looks like, where the money comes from, what the weather has done, and who takes over next.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
How did you end up farming this particular piece of land?
The answer sorts farmers into roughly three groups: inherited it, married into it, or bought or leased their way in. Which one they are shapes almost everything else, including how much debt they carry and how freely they can talk about the farm's future.
- 2
What do you grow or raise here, and how much of it?
Get acres, head, or tonnes early, because every later answer is uninterpretable without scale. A thousand-acre row crop farm and a twelve-acre market garden use the same vocabulary to describe completely different jobs.
- 3
Walk me through what you did yesterday, start to finish.
Better than asking about a typical day, because there is no typical day and the question invites a summary you could have written yourself. Yesterday is close enough that they recall the boring parts, and the boring parts are the story.
- 4
How different is this month from six months ago?
Farming is not one job but four or five jobs rotating through the year, and most visitors only ever see one of them. Asking this gets you the winter work, the paperwork season, and the two weeks when nobody sleeps.
- 5
Who else works here, and are they family, hired, or seasonal?
Labour is where farm economics become visible. Listen for unpaid family hours, which almost never appear in the farm's accounts, and for seasonal crews, which raises questions about housing and wages worth handling carefully and directly.
- 6
What are you deciding right now that you will not know the result of for months?
This gets at the part of farming that outsiders find hardest to imagine: committing money and land in spring to a price that will not exist until autumn. The specific decision they name tells you what they are anxious about this year.
- 7
Which machine do you depend on most, and what happens the day it breaks?
Equipment answers open up capital cost, repair rights, dealer distance and the habit of fixing things yourself. Ask what a replacement costs; the number is usually startling to anyone who has not looked.
- 8
How much of your year is decided by weather and how much by prices?
Farmers rarely rank these the way outsiders expect. Someone who says prices matter more is usually telling you they can manage a bad growing season but not a bad market, which points you towards contracts, storage and who they sell to.
- 9
Where does this go after it leaves your gate?
Most farmers can trace their product exactly one step, to an elevator, packer, co-op or processor, and then lose sight of it. That boundary is itself the finding, and it explains why they have so little say over the final price.
- 10
Who decides what you get paid for it?
Expect an answer that involves a market they do not control, a buyer with more information than they have, or a contract signed months ahead. Ask whether they have ever walked away from a price, and what happened when they did.
- 11
What does a good year look like in money, and what does a bad one look like?
Ask it plainly and late enough that trust exists, and accept ranges. Many operations run on off-farm income or a spouse's job with health insurance attached, and that detail almost never comes out unless you ask about money directly.
- 12
What is different about this farm from when you started?
You will usually hear about consolidation, bigger equipment, fewer neighbours, and more record keeping. Push for one concrete change they made themselves rather than a general lament about the industry.
- 13
What have you noticed about the weather here over the years you have farmed?
Asked as observation rather than politics, this gets detailed answers: first frost dates, when the rain arrives, how many workable field days there are. Farmers keep this kind of record in their heads even when they avoid the wider argument.
- 14
What do people get wrong about what you do?
A gift of a question that also functions as a check on your own assumptions. Whatever they correct is probably something you were about to write, and the correction is worth quoting directly.
- 15
What part of this job would you not choose again?
Softer than asking what they hate, and it usually produces the honest complaint: the isolation, the paperwork, the animal deaths, the fact that no one else can cover a day off. Expect a pause before the answer, and let the pause run.
- 16
How do you decide the day is over?
There is no clock, so the answer reveals how the household actually works, who eats dinner alone, and whether the farm has any boundary at all. It often opens the door to talking about strain without asking about it head on.
- 17
What is the most expensive mistake you have made here?
Farmers tend to answer this one generously because the lesson is concrete and dated: a crop planted too early, a bull bought on looks, a contract signed at the wrong time. Vague answers here usually mean you have not earned the story yet.
- 18
Who taught you the thing you use most often?
Points you to a second interview and to how knowledge moves in farming, which is mostly by watching rather than by training. If the answer is a parent who has died, expect the conversation to change tone, and follow it.
- 19
What happens to this place after you?
The hardest question on the list and usually the most revealing. Succession involves children who left, land values that outrun what a farm can earn, and siblings with different plans, and many farmers have not said any of it out loud.
- 20
What should I have asked that I did not?
Close with this one. Farmers are used to visitors asking about the same three topics, and the answer often hands you the thing that actually matters to them this year, which your prepared list had no way of anticipating.
Interviewing a working farmer
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Setting it up
Setting it up
Ask when, not whether
Planting and harvest are wrong. So is calving, lambing, or any week with rain forecast after a dry spell. Say that you will come whenever suits and let them pick, and be ready for the answer to be a month later than you wanted.
Go to them
Phone interviews with farmers are thin, because the specifics live in the field, the shed and the barn. An hour walking the place produces more than three hours at a table, and it gives you something to point at when the conversation stalls.
Offer to ride along
A tractor cab or a feed round is often the only uninterrupted hour in the day, and people talk more freely side by side than face to face. Check whether your recorder will pick anything up over the engine before you rely on it.
Dress so you are not a problem
Boots you can hose off, clothes you do not mind ruining, and clean footwear if you are going near livestock, since biosecurity is a real concern on many farms. Ask before opening any gate and before touching any animal.
Getting past the tour
Getting past the tour
Most farm interviews stay on the surface because the farmer has given the tour a hundred times. A few habits break through:
- Ask for numbers every time a general claim appears: how many acres, how many head, how many days, how many dollars.
- Ask for the last time rather than a usual example. Recency produces detail that generalities cannot.
- When they name a problem, ask what they did about it, then ask whether it worked.
- Let silence sit after a hard question. Farmers are comfortable with pauses and will often keep going if you do not fill the gap.
- Repeat back what you think you heard, in your own words. Corrections are where the accurate version arrives.
Subjects that need care
Subjects that need care
Money
Debt, land values and support payments are sensitive because neighbours read the same articles. Ask for ranges rather than exact figures, and agree in advance what is on the record.
Chemicals and animal welfare
Both attract questions loaded with judgment, and farmers hear the judgment before they hear the question. Ask what they use and how they decide, rather than asking them to defend a practice.
Labour
Questions about wages, hours and workers' immigration status can put people at risk, including the workers. If you intend to write about labour, say so plainly at the start and offer to speak to the workers separately with their own consent.
Family
Succession, illness and the children who did not come back are common threads and are genuinely painful. Ask once, gently, and drop it the moment the answer closes down.