 Hi, welcome to the Future of Democracy. I'm your host, Sam Gill. This is a show where we look at the trends, ideas, and disruptions changing the face of our democracy. Think of it as kind of the op-ed page of our democracy, a place where we can unpack big ideas, big debates, and dig into them. And all month long, we have been having a series of conversations with featured authors as part of the 37th annual Miami Book Fair. And we've been talking to poets, we've been talking to journalists, we've been talking to historians about their books, their ideas, and what those ideas might mean for the future of our democracy. And again, this is a partnership with the Miami Book Fair, which is running from November 15th to 22nd. You can learn more at Miami Book Fair online.com or on Twitter at Miami Book Fair. And the really important thing to know is that the Miami Book Fair is going to be featuring a ton of free conversations with authors like Margaret Atwood, Bill Nye, The Science Guy, the actress Natalie Portman. But these these conversations will only be free during November 15th to 22nd. One of the authors is a famous entrepreneur and farmer, Sarah Frey. If you had a Halloween pumpkin, it probably came from Frey Farms. And I had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah and talk about her new book, The Growing Season, How I Built a New Life and Saved an American Farm. It was a fascinating conversation about her life, about her career, about the American Dream. And I hope you enjoy it. All right, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me tonight, Sam. So first, just help our listeners and our viewers understand what the scope of Frey Farms is, you know, what what tell us a bit about the business and and and how many products we probably buy from it without even knowing. Well, Frey Farms is a company that I actually started when I was a teenager. And now we have farms and facilities in seven different states. We grow fresh fruits and vegetables. We're best known as America's pumpkin farm, but pumpkins are actually a small part of of what we sell, even though we sell millions and millions of pumpkins each and every year. We actually sell more watermelons. And down in Florida, where you're at, you guys actually have this really great retail chain called Publix. And they carry all of the fresh beverages that we make on the farm, the Sarah's Homegrown Agua Frescoes and the Samo Watermelon Juice. But we grow fresh fruits and vegetables in seven states. And we primarily grow them for our retail partners. So we do business with the top 25 retail chains in the country. And, you know, there are our partners. And we also do business with restaurant chains as well, like Subway. So you can find some of our farm fresh beverages at Subway stores as well. Subway restaurants, I should say. When you, you know, when you started the business, did you have any any any aspiration that it would be the significant of a grower? What were your what were you imagining? You know, for me, Sam, I started the business out of necessity. I moved out when I was 15 years old. And I had some experience and some background and selling fruits and vegetables with my mom as a child on a summer melon delivery route. So after I moved out, I attended high school and college simultaneously. And I took the one of the farm trucks and I expanded her route after she went to work for a radio station. She used to deliver to about 12 stores. And that summer I expanded it to about 150 different individual independent grocery retailers. And what was kind of was kind of cool about that was it was a summer job for me. Like, you know, you always hear people like tease and say, Oh, work at like a summer job. I loved my summer job when I was a little girl and getting to get off of the hill. So I grew up in this place that I refer to in my book, The Growing Season as the hill. And I grew up in rural poverty. And I share in the book what a lot of those experiences were and what life was like growing up here in this very rural isolated region of southern Illinois. And so everything that I was doing as a child was preparing me to leave this life behind. I never imagined that I was going to stay. And when I started my business, it wasn't necessarily that I just, you know, saw myself selling, you know, slinging melons out of the back of a hot pickup truck for the rest of my life. It was just a way to make money and get myself out of the situation that I had been trying to escape for so long. And then when I was very young, I had to make the decision about our family farm. We grew up on a about 80 acres. And it was the home place where my brothers and I grew up. And I had spent most the majority of my youth planning my escape. And then as a kid as a teenager, I had this epiphany. When I was walking the last horse off of the farm, and the farm was really getting ready to ultimately end up going back to the bank because it was, you know, in financial distress. I made a decision that I was going to apply what I was doing in my business to buying the family farm, not because of my love of agriculture, love of the Netherlands or really anything other than my love of my family. Because at that time I had this sort of very, very clear mental image of what life might look like when we were all 40 years old. And when you're a teenage girl, you think 40 is like really old, right? So I was thinking, Cush, if I don't do something now to save our farm from foreclosure, then we won't have any place to come back to my older brothers and I when we're 40. And, you know, like I said, to me 40 was really, really old. So I made the decision that I would stay behind and ultimately dig my destiny out of the dirt that I was raised on. And that's what I did. So the rest was kind of history. All right, well, so I'm almost 40 and it still feels really old. So the first part of your motivation, we know statistically, is not unique in so many rural communities, you know, around this country. People are working to leap. They're working to find a way out, found a personal way back. Is that luck or is there something in your story that can help us to figure out the future of these communities? I mean, a lot of ways, you know, we're recording this today before Election Day, these dynamics are a big part of what is motivating different people, whether they're the people who got out or the people who are staying to make the decision they are. So what, is there anything in your story that can tell us about the future of these places? Well, you know, I think there, I think there probably is. I think, for me, and growing up, it was, it wasn't just growing up in rural America, you know, it was, it was growing up in really rural, like poverty, we hunted, we harvested, we killed our food that we ate every night. And, you know, many of the memories that I share in the book, the growing season, are wonderful. And they're, you know, there's laughter and love and light. But I share some, also some pretty, pretty tough stories and some tragic things that happen as well. And when I think about the community that I grew up in, I think about the opportunities. And for me, as a child, I just didn't see, I just didn't see those opportunities. I knew that I would have to leave, you know, I knew that I would have to escape. And I knew that I couldn't give up on myself. But I also felt a certain sense, you know, it was sort of that same thing that, that led me to buy the farm and to like take a stand and say, no, I shouldn't have to leave to be successful. I will figure this out right here. And I think there are a lot of people actually that have that inside of themselves and that courage to take that chance. It's, you know, for me, I think I had a lot to do with courage. And I think people that grow up in rural communities ultimately have the courage of just finding the courage and then thinking about things differently. I had to learn about the outside world from a set of encyclopedias when I was a little girl. Occasionally, I'd get to take trips to Chicago with my father, you know, if I stayed up and waited for him until he got ready to leave in the middle of the night and I, you know, come out of my room and say, oh, please take me, you know. And so I knew there was a bigger world out there. And I knew that there were skyscrapers and buildings and, and, and, you know, successful women walking down the street holding their briefcases with their suits on. And so I knew that existed. And I, you know, I thought I wanted that life when I was a little girl. But ultimately, now if you would ask me was that is that the life that you would want like pounding it on the pavement every single day? No, I've built a really incredible life here in rural America, not just for myself, but for my whole family. And I think those opportunities still exist in rural America. But it's, it's also, you know, it's also tough when you see your families making investments in, you know, whether it's working in a, you know, a Maytag factory that shut down and ship the, the, the jobs to a foreign country or, you know, we used to make a lot of auto parts here in the community that I was raised in. And, you know, NAFTA, ultimately under NAFTA, so many of those jobs went away. They just, they just disappeared overnight and people showed up to work and, you know, they may have put 20 years in at a company and they were given a pink slip, you know, and, and it was actually generations of people who had worked in those factories and, and either in the, you know, the coal or the oil industry or whatever, we don't have a lot of coal, a lot of, we have some coal around here, but not a ton of coal. But when, when families would see those jobs, you know, disappearing, I know how hard it is to leave the place that you love and that you, you know, made so many memories in and that you grew up in and ultimately that was a reason to stay. But I also knew that I had to do things very differently. And I knew that I couldn't think or do anything traditional. So if I was to follow the traditional model when I started fry farms, I would have tried to grow corn and soybeans, but I also would have failed. I would have been a failure at that because I didn't have enough acres. It was a very small farm that I started out on. So I had to think like an entrepreneur and think about how can I do more with less? How can I grow more with less acreage? And how can I produce a crop that has, you know, a higher per acre basis yield and a return, a financial return? Maybe it's higher risk, but it's also higher reward. And that's actually why I started growing pumpkins. I mean, where the first pumpkins weren't the first crop that I sold, but they were the pumpkins were the first crop. They actually grew on this particular piece of dirt. And I remember everyone in the community thought I lost my mind because they were like driving by and they're seeing like thousands and thousands of these orange pumpkins growing in a field. They'd never seen it before. No one had ever produced, you know, fruits and vegetables in this area. So there were kind of a lot of sort of narrow minded people living in their very small world and they couldn't see the big world that I was living in. They couldn't see that I had a plan that I had a vision that I was going to be able to sell all of these pumpkins. And it took them a while to become believers. But that's sort of, sometimes we find ourselves in that mindset. And I think, I think that's probably one of the challenges too that that we face, you know, and folks growing up and living in rural communities. I think we have a lot to learn from each other, people living in more urban communities and people living in rural communities. We're really ultimately not that different at all. But it's, I think it's important to take the time to expand your world, whether you're living in a city, and you learn more about what's happening in the heartland and what really goes on and what really happens on farms, which is why I think, you know, The Growing Season is actually a great book because it offers that sort of insight, or whether you're living in the country and you need to learn and understand more about, you know, the challenges that, you know, people face in urban areas. So that was a long, long answer to a short question. I'm sorry. I want to come back to you as an innovator, but there was something you also said that I want to spend a moment on, which is you sort of talked about the experience, the economic dislocation that has taken hold in so many rural communities, industrial communities. And we could have a discussion about the kind of economic policy questions that are clearly a subject of debate right now. Are those jobs coming back? Are they not? What's a fair trade deal, et cetera. But it strikes me that part of the intensity of our political debate over the past, you know, four plus years has not only been these policy questions. What sort of opportunity has evaporated? How do we return it? Should we return it? Can we return it? But also the sense that somehow like the rest of America, people living in cities or policymakers, there's also, there's something they're not appreciating about that experience. And this part of America, that there's a, there's a, there's a, in addition to a frustration, there's a resentment about something that's being overlooked. Is that, is that right? Like is there something that we're overlooking? Is there, is there, is there reason to be resentful? I don't think there's really reason for anyone to be resentful. I mean, what is America missing about exactly the kind of the people and the values that you saw and that you grew up around and clearly had an impact on you when you saw those jobs evaporate? Well, I think that America is an idea and I think sometimes we get ahead of ourselves too and we don't take, we don't take people into consideration, you know. There are certain segments of the population that can easily be overlooked and that could really be anybody. It could be, you know, folks in rural communities living in rural communities in the heartland or maybe folks living in more economically depressed urban areas. I mean, there are pockets of people all over this country ultimately that are overlooked and have been impacted by a lot of the policy decisions that have been made by, you know, past administrations and even, you know, like currently that it's not perfect, right? So America, we know that we know that America isn't perfect, but we're always striving to be a more perfect union. And for me, I think, you know, I think if I was to simplify this, the best, you know, down to something that I think everyone could understand. I think your, the listeners and the readers would be shocked to know that 50% of all of our fresh produce, all of our fresh produce is imported. Over 50% of the fresh fruits and vegetables that you eat are imported. And when you go into the frozen section, at it, just say your favorite really high end grocery retailer and you shop the frozen section and you pull out a bag of, you know, mixed vegetables, you don't even know where they come from because of our labeling laws and they don't have to tell you because the fresh produce, they have to tell you on the label like what country it comes from. But if you pull out a bag of frozen product that's mixed with other products, then according to our labeling laws, we don't, they don't, you don't have to share that information to the consumer. We don't have to tell you, Hey, these are actually, these are actually green beans imported from China or broccoli or whatever it might be. You have no idea really where that comes from. And so you, for me, I get very frustrated when I, you know, saving a family farm is very important to me. Obviously it's how I started my business. And it's, you know, we work with a lot of smaller growers and we market their crops and we take risk with them and do things to help them stay in business as well. But one of the things that sort of really, really that I struggle with is that people, you know, oh, I want to go to the farmer's market, I want to support my local farmer. But then we're not necessarily educated on how some of these trade policies have affected, you know, things right down to the very basic food supply. Maybe you can overlook, okay, we're not making auto parts here anymore. We're not, you know, we're not doing this. We're not doing that or technology's been outsourced when it comes down to something as basic as your food. It's like, okay, we all, everyone would say, I don't know anyone who would say, I don't want to support an American farmer. I want to buy imported food. Well, we have to start making policies that ultimately protect American farmers. And, you know, otherwise they go out of business. I mean, like so a lot of these trade deals that were made many, many years ago, ultimately put many growers out of business, especially because many of the countries that the American farmer was forced to compete with didn't have the same labor practices and standards and didn't have to pay the same wages. And then, and then farmers start disappearing. And then you get to this moment in time where you're like, well, wait a minute, what just happened? We've lost over 50% of our food supply, you know, it's coming in from foreign countries. And then you throw a global pandemic on top of that. And then consumers start walking into their grocery stores and they're looking around. They're like, wait, where's all the food? I'm missing some of my favorite brands. And hey, we're out of lettuce, we're out of some of these things or we're out of tomatoes or I can't get a fresh watermelon. Well, you know, it's kind of like we probably should have been investing in those rural communities, investing in those farms, and not overlooking these, when you start to overlook these segments and these populations, whether they be rural, urban or whatever, at some point it catches up to you and then manifests itself into something as simple and as basic as where does half of your food come from now? And I think we've learned that too, like where does it, you know, so consumers, I believe, coming out of 2020, one of the good things that will come out of this this year and what we've been through as a country is what is it that we've that we've learned now about our supply chain and about our investments in our country. And I'm not saying everything needs to be made here, I'm a proponent of free but fair trade. And how do we make deals in the future that protect the American worker that protect the American business and protect the American farmer and protect the things that are so very vital and important to the strength of our country, starting with our food supply and our medicine. And, you know, protecting many of our our you know, when I think about the technology that is just like walked right out of our country and that happens in agriculture too. We've lost so much technology and agriculture. So those are things that I think that we can certainly improve upon. But like I said, I just want to bring it back to, you know, we're not perfect, but we do strive as a country to be more perfect. And there's so much to learn from each other. And I'd really like to see I'm really waiting, I can't wait for this election to be over. Because I think that there is, we have so much more in common, if we would just be able to talk to each other in such a way that, you know, wasn't heightened with emotion. And that we talked about, you know, like some real basic things, I think we agree. I think everyone probably agrees on more than what they would ever imagine. Yeah, that's sort of what I'm sort of getting at. I mean, I think, I think, you know, I mean, trade policy is interesting because in some ways that over the course of 30 years, the two major political parties have swapped. You know, in the 80s and 90s, Democrats were obviously sort of the much more productive party trade is a significant issue clearly for President Trump. It's something he campaigned on. It's a place he's put, it's where he's put a lot of his focus as president. And and and 30 kind of 30 plus years into globalization, you are starting to see, you know, much more discussion about the kind of labor arbitrage issues that you're that you're pointing to. And we're accumulating evidence about who really is affected, who is it, which benefits, supposed benefits are materializing versus not. But it also strikes me that like so much of our to your last point, so much of our political conversation right now is about is not just about is partly about what's the right policy on balance, and partly about no one is listening to me. And, and so much of your book, I feel like is bringing us into your it's not a political book, it's a memoir, but we're we're understanding who you are, and where you come from. And as an individual, and what that community meant to you as a as a as an individual, but but let's talk a little bit about you as an entrepreneur. So, you know, one of the things that struck me in the book was in the in the introduction, you kind of paint the picture of yourself as sort of a fish out of water with the other kind of corporate tycoons, and sort of the unexpected successful CEO. And I think listening to your story, I look in the 21st century, being a teenager who builds a national and global business actually isn't as unique of a story, right? What's different is those people are coming up with a file sharing service or some new novel way to waste our time online or rented apartment or whatever. And you're growing, you're doing, you're doing the thing that's traditionally powered our economy. But you know, there's so much of the story. It strikes me is exactly the same insights, you know, that we valorize in a Silicon Valley, it's exactly what you walked us through, you know, asking really basic questions about the economics of the business, upending really traditional assumptions about what it means to be a successful farmer, taking on some risk in a controlled way. So I mean, I guess, are you that much a fish out of water? Or is this actually the story of the 21st century entrepreneur, which is someone who sees the world in a different way than other people, makes an investment in themselves, you know, brings others along and and ultimately takes the idea to scale. You know, I think I would say you're probably right about that. I think that I think I was an entrepreneur before I was a farmer, you know, I had that fire inside of me, and then it was it was nurtured at a very early age because I was sort of like, not because I had any classic classical training or anything like that. It was like literally pushed out of the boat, you know, like as a little girl, you know, my mom said, get out of the car and go in and, you know, talk to the manager of that store and find out how many melons he wants to buy. Well, I couldn't say no, right? That's my mom, she's told me what to go do. And you back then you did what your parents told you to do. So that forced me to have these sort of interactions with adults at a very early age and forced me to, you know, to ultimately and over time, it built my confidence. And I learned to ask for things that I wanted. And I also learned that, you know, people can't say yes to you if you don't ask. So I think, you know, all of this, you know, the formative years and even the hardships and I talk about that. And that's why I think it's important in the book, the growing season, you know, I have the same philosophy in life that I do in business. And, you know, as a farmer, I have to be an eternal optimist, or I would never be in this industry because it's too high risk and you suffer a lot of disappointments and, you know, crop failures and weather disasters and city disease. I mean, you name it, we deal with it as farmers. And you have to be willing to just keep picking yourself back up and, you know, persistence is, you know, it's probably one of the fundamental building blocks of being successful in agriculture. But I think, for me, you know, that those lessons that I learned and even some of the toughest things that I went through as a little girl, ultimately, there was good in all of it. And now reflecting back and when I wrote the memoir, I looked at some of those really difficult and very challenging times that I went through. And I'm able to recognize what it was and what value and what was the good that came from that experience. And like I said, there wasn't really anything. And there were some very brutal harsh things that I talk about in the growing season. But sitting here today having this conversation with you, and we tell you that there is nothing that I went through that I didn't find good in and grow from. And so I think that's true. And that's not unique to me, I think it's really a mindset. And I think that everyone has it within themselves to look for the positive. And even in this year, 2020, when everything seems to be upended, and there are so many challenges, and I know we face many challenges in our business was greatly impacted by the shutdown. And there was a time early on when COVID hit that I didn't know if we were going to be able to harvest our crops to get our workers. If I didn't know, are Americans going to buy shelf-stable food and stock their pantries? Or do they care about? Do they even want fresh produce? So it's been a challenging year. But I've had to get myself in the mindset where I was thinking about, okay, well, yeah, this has been really tough and I could be really sad right now. And I miss life as it was. But what are the good things that have come out of this? I've had more time with my two boys, William and Luke, I'm not traveling as much, we're having more family dinners, we're cooking together. And it really gave me an opportunity to spend time with them and teach them about the business. And not that I want them to come directly into the business, I have a rule about letting the kids join the company, like they have to go to college and they have to go work for someone else and have it in a career entirely separate from what we're doing in the family business. And then after they've done that and they make the decision, they want to come back and join the business. And that's great, but I want them to go out and see the world. But this time in 2020 that I was afforded with my kids, I feel like was time that I wouldn't have had, had we not had this really horrible thing happened to our country. Maybe I wouldn't have taken it, maybe I wouldn't have had it to give. But I have it. And I feel like that's a gift. And ultimately, it's been a pretty tough growing season for everyone. But there are things that we can look to. And as long as we always look for the good, there's always good no matter what happens. And focus on that, we'll get through the really tough growing seasons. And the ones that are follow can teach us just as much as the ones that are bountiful. Well, let me, let me ask you about the last question. Let me ask you about that. I mean, I think the, the question you probably get a lot is sort of what advice you would give to other entrepreneurs. But since this show is called the future of democracy, I'm not going to ask that question, the last conversion, which is we're in a moment where a lot of people are skeptical of capitalism as they understand it in a different kind of way than I think we've seen in recent decades. They're skeptical that opportunity can be broadly shared. They're kind of skeptical of the sort of capacity of business. And, and some of that prompted by concerns about inequality and inequity. And one of the things that just was struck me in what you said it really struck me in the book too is that your experience in business, and all of your different ventures and your hustle, you know, from when you were a little kid, all the way through to fry farms, certainly taught you a lot about business, but also taught you a lot about private virtue, you know, about life and what it means to be a good person. So instead of sort of what advice would you give to entrepreneurs? What advice would you give to us as citizens, you know, as residents in this democracy? What has business taught you about being a good citizen, about being, being a good member of this democratic community? You know, I think for me as a business owner, some of the, the moments that have brought me the most joy and fulfillment is never really, you know, yes, do I like to hunt and win? Do I like to get the deal and all? Yes, that's built in me. I'm a hunter by nature. But the, the best moments for me have been when I see how my work has paid off and the risks that I've taken in business have affected other people's lives, people that I care for, people that had joined my company, you know, the high school, you know, graduates that didn't weren't able to go on and get a college degree because they had to start working and making money, but they were really bright and I brought them into the company at an early age and they were able to make, you know, really, really great livings and support their families and, you know, the, the guy that lost his job at the factory, you know, that I went to high school with and, you know, factory closed, but I knew he was a really hard worker and he was tough and he had grit and he was smart and he would figure it out and he'd be a great member of our team, you know, hiring him, seeing him support his family. Those are the moments as a business owner. That's, that's when you feel good. That's what business is. I mean, I believe, I believe in capitalism all day, every day and twice on Sunday. Okay. But I also believe in compassionate capitalism and their, their, you know, business owners and entrepreneurs are not driven by money or they're not successful. Now, if you want to talk about, you know, hedge fund managers and VC guys or whatever, but your people in business, in business in general, they don't do it for the monetary game. They do it because they have something inside of them that inspires them and drives them. And the fulfillment comes when they affect other people's lives in a positive way. And that's when you get the good, the feel good. That's when you want to work hard, but that's when you're going to stay later. That's when you're, when you're going to go the extra mile. That's when you're not going to give up, you know, when you, when you feel like you, you know, you could or check out, because you also feel a certain sense of responsibility to you, to your community and, you know, not just to the people that you employ, but to the value that you're bringing into your, into your community. So I don't really buy the notion that people are starting to think, you know, capitalism is bad. I mean, maybe we're, maybe we're a little confused about what that means, but I know what it means for me. And I know the good that comes from that. And, you know, the results of all of the hard work and how it impacts communities and how ultimately it doesn't really matter what we're doing in our, in our businesses, we're really all sort of working for the same thing. And that's, you know, supporting others in our communities and, and, and growing those communities and making them better. And that's certainly what I feel like I've done. And my family has done, or our company has done in every rural community. So if you think about where we started out in Southern Illinois, that's one rural community. But now we operate in seven different states and all of those locations are in, what are they in? They're in rural communities. And there are people that are hired that work in those rural communities and money that people are generating that go back into, they get put back into their local stores or local shops or local businesses. And so that makes, that ultimately makes me feel really good about the work that I started at a very early age, Mike, and that my family continues on today. Well, the author Sarah Fry, the book is The Growing Season, How I Built a New Life and Saved an American Farm. You can follow her on Twitter at Real Sarah Fry. You can follow the book at growing season and the website is fryfarms.com. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. Sam, thanks so much for having me tonight. It was really a pleasure to be with you. All right, folks, every single one of these conversations is going to be released leading up to the 37th annual Miami Book Fair. It runs from November 15 to 22. Every conversation is free during that period. Check out MiamiBookFair.com or go to Twitter at Miami Book Fair. And remember, the future of democracy runs every Thursday live at 1 p.m. Eastern. You can learn more at kf.org slash fdshow. You can also follow the FD podcast at Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you follow podcasts. That's also where we will be releasing every single one of these exclusive conversations in partnership with the Miami Book Fair. And of course, feel free to send a question at any time to me on Twitter at the Sam Gill. Thanks so much for listening.