2020 Co-op Hall of Fame Inductee Ben Burkett discusses his legacy & the impact of COVID19 on farming

VERNON OAKES: Good morning everybody, this is Vernon Oakes. Welcome to Everything Co-Op this Thursday morning. It’s raining here in D.C. The farmers need rain to get their crops to grow, so we praise God for rain and we have a farmer with us today, Mr. Ben Burkett out of Mississippi. Good morning, Ben.

BEN BURKETT: Good morning, good morning sir.

VERNON OAKES: How are you this morning?

BEN BURKETT: I’m doing very well.

VERNON OAKES: I understand that farmers get up at 5 o’clock and hit the field, so this is like afternoon for you, isn’t it?

BEN BURKETT: Yes sir, 5 o’clock every day, seven days a week.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. So, how long you been farming?

BEN BURKETT: I’ve been farming on my own for 43 years, but I’ve been involved in the area of farming all my life. I actually started farming in 1973. My father financed my crop and in ’74 I was on my own.

VERNON OAKES: Your father financed your crop?

BEN BURKETT: Right, that’s the way you would go, you want to start farming and the first year your father, somebody in your family, go to the bank and sign for you to get the money you need. They do it one year. So, now my daughter’s taking over so I will start her off one year and you’re on your own.

VERNON OAKES: So, did you farm on your father’s land or you got your own land to farm on?

BEN BURKETT: I was farming on my father’s land. But, he, he financed for my seeds, my fertilizer, and my chemicals and labor and everything I needed for that year.

VERNON OAKES: So, you had to know how to budget so you could figure out, okay, if I’m going to farm an acre or five acres or whatever, I need this amount of money, take that to the bank and say I need to borrow this kind of money and then your father cosigns for you.

BEN BURKETT: Cosigned for you. And then [overlap]…

VERNON OAKES: Well, that’s a great way of…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] [indistinct] in 1978 I got a USDA loan.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

BEN BURKETT: Which was, you know, discrimination because I had one of those loans that, well, I had the type of loan they called it the lawsuit, the one, they called it supervisor account. I couldn’t write my own checks.

VERNON OAKES: Oh, they gave you loan, but they wrote your checks?

BEN BURKETT: Right. If I wanted to buy $1,000 worth of fertilizer I had to go to the office, they had to sign the check and then I had to take it back to the, to the co-op store. A supervisor account, they said.

VERNON OAKES: Well, that seems like, okay, they don’t trust you to be able to spend your own money…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] [indistinct] your own business.

VERNON OAKES: Right on. And that created a suit? You were able to sue them?

BEN BURKETT: That created, [overlap] [indistinct] they filed a lawsuit, Pigford verses USDA in ’96. Transaction lawsuit for black farmers, yes it did. It was thousands of farmers. The research showed they was only doing black farmers like that.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, so this discrimination shows up in all kinds of different ways.

BEN BURKETT: Yes it does.

VERNON OAKES: So, I always thought that, that suit was because they wouldn’t let black farmers get the loan, but they let you have the loan…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] let you get the loan and even after you got the loan it was still managed.

VERNON OAKES: Wow. That is terrible. But, I want to go, I want to go all the way back to your father was a farmer.

BEN BURKETT: His father.

VERNON OAKES: He had the land, oh, his father was a farmer too?

BEN BURKETT: Right. Same name, Ben Burkett.

VERNON OAKES: Wow, you got a history. So how far back, what year did your grandfather, your grandfather? Yeah, your grandfather start the…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] Some of, my, on my mother’s side, my mother’s grandpa which would have been my grandfather got a homestead in 1889, 164 acres from the United States government.

VERNON OAKES: Eighteen-eighty-nine.

BEN BURKETT: Eighteen-eighty-nine. There were quite a few African American families in south Mississippi received a land patent they called it, original deed from the United States government basically giving that land to them because it was [indistinct] in the ‘80s and ‘90s. So, many…

VERNON OAKES: Eighteen-eighties and eighteen-nineties, okay.

BEN BURKETT: Eighteen-eighties and eighteen-nineties, now I’ve seen one as late as 1896, the [SOUNDS LIKE: dazma] family, they got a homestead. So, it was, at one time in this community African Americans had 3,000 acres.

VERNON OAKES: How many do they have now?

BEN BURKETT: I would say about, about maybe half of that.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, that’s not bad.

BEN BURKETT: Not quite 2,000. A lot of it was involved in discrimination, some of it was sold, some left for Chicago and just left the land.

VERNON OAKES: All right, so in 1889 where was that in relationship to the Civil War?

BEN BURKETT: I’ve seen some as early as 1882, so about 20, 25 years after the Civil War, so, they were fortunate enough to have someone that could read and write to do the documentation and file the paperwork in Jackson and then Washington, D.C. I haven’t been able to research and see who that was, but somebody had to know how to read and write to, you know, continue, to do the legal process and I have the original, in my family, I have the original document itself on parchment paper.

VERNON OAKES: You have the original deed that goes back to 1889 which gave your family the 189 acres?

BEN BURKETT: Right, right, I got the original document right here in this house, yes sir.

VERNON OAKES: Wow, that’s a real interesting history. So, some black folks did get their 40 acres and a mule, you all got 164…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] That’s what I always said.

VERNON OAKES: I didn’t know that. I just thought it was an idle promise, but it was true, the homestead.

BEN BURKETT: The homestead, yes sir. And I was in a co-op training several years ago and they showed it [indistinct] was able to build wealth and live [indistinct] other African American families. And that is, in my case, that is true. The farm was 164, now it’s 320 acres. Every generation added some acreage.

VERNON OAKES: So, with, with getting ownership of land and then your family passed it down, you all stayed on the farm, you didn’t sell the farm, you passed it on and then, so generation after generation could build some wealth.

BEN BURKETT: Correct.

VERNON OAKES: Where, most black families don’t build wealth, as a matter of fact they may have a negative wealth.

BEN BURKETT: And that contributes directly to the land and good management, you know, taking care of the resources that you have and that’s my generation, well the generation even before me was able to, went to college off of that land, basically from cotton production, that was the money crop up until the ‘80s.

VERNON OAKES: Wait a minute, wait a minute, you went to [overlap]…

BEN BURKETT: [indistinct]

VERNON OAKES: You went to college? You don’t have to be a farmer, to be a farmer you don’t have to go to college do you? I just thought you got out there and got behind your horse and plowed.

BEN BURKETT: I don’t think so. I attended Alcorn State University 1960 to ’72 when I graduated. I was going to leave the state of Mississippi and go to Chicago like everybody else, but my father got sick in 1973. So, my mother asked me to come help with that crop and I’ve been here ever since.

VERNON OAKES: So, so, what did you major in at Alcorn State?

BEN BURKETT: Agriculture. Yeah, I got agriculture with an emphasis on economics. It was a good experience. I was able to go all four years. Well, what happened in 1968, they integrated the livestock show, so me and another African American boy in the family, we were the first two to show in the integrated livestock show and I had a pure bread angus heifer that I sold in that show for $1,600 and it had cost but $400 a semester to go to Alcorn and they don’t count, I had about two years [indistinct] went off of the farm.

VERNON OAKES: When I went to Bluefield State College in 1966 it was $550 a semester, so we’re about in the same world.

BEN BURKETT: Yeah, [indistinct] a real good experience, you know, being on the farm and being involved in the cooperative movement and I just kind of sometimes how many cooperatives I belong to here, you know, the electric cooperative, the water cooperative, the livestock sale cooperative, the production, the marketing cooperative, the credit union. I’m in at least, the water association there’s a cooperative, Rural Water Association.

VERNON OAKES: What about, were you, you got marketing, what about a purchasing co-op? Do you buy your grain and everything through a purchasing co-op?

BEN BURKETT: We buy the seed and fertilizer. We never had a marketing co-op for the grains, they always been the big companies, car dealer, Archer Daniels Midland, Continental Grain, we know they had, there’s some in other parts of Mississippi, but we never had one in Petal, Mississippi, I’m in Petal, Mississippi, down close to New Orleans and Mobile. We had a timber cooperative at one time, but it disbanded, United Wood Cutters. All farmers [indistinct] at one time or another, you know. We, you know, many of the big companies like Sunkist and Land O’Lakes, all of those are cooperatives which we, you know, meet with every now and then. We support one another.

VERNON OAKES: So, what I get is that you, I just counted five co-ops, electric, water, livestock, marketing, credit union and you used to be in a timber co-op, so that’s five co-ops that you belong to and then you also do work with other co-ops like Sunkist and Land O’Lakes, so the six principles of cooperation among co-ops.

BEN BURKETT: Right, uh huh, absolutely right. [overlap]

VERNON OAKES: So, why is co-ops so important.

BEN BURKETT: I was going to say, in the spring the farmers association has a marketing person cooperative, it’s over 40 years old and it got started in 1977, ’78 because of discrimination. There used to be buyers come in this area that would buy produce from small farmers, like the watermelons and peppers and cucumbers and everything. Well, somehow or another the black farmers found out that they were paying the white farmer one price and black farmers another price.

So, what they decided to do, the original members said, well, the best thing for us to do is we take our produce straight to Chicago ourself. So, they put their money together and bought a 22, 24-foot [indistinct] refrigerated truck and the co-op started off with eight members, well, it went up as high as 56 members, now we got 34 members. So, that’s how it got started.

VERNON OAKES: So, the buyers were paying the black farmers less, perhaps a lot less than they paid the white farmer for the same watermelon.

BEN BURKETT: Right. They ain’t bought melon [indistinct]. So, they decided, well, we just go and haul our own.

VERNON OAKES: So, you by yourself as a farmer, could not afford to ship your products to Chicago, but as eight farmers came together you could afford to buy the truck and you’d have enough to fill that truck and… [overlap]

BEN BURKETT: And load the truck with 1,000 boxes, right.

VERNON OAKES: Mr. Burkett, we’re going to take our first break here. This is very, very interesting, four or five generations of farmers. We’ll be right back, please don’t touch that dial.

VERNON OAKES: Welcome back everybody. This is Vernon Oakes and the program is Everything Cooperative. We have Mr. Ben Burkett is our guest today. He is out of Petal, Mississippi which is close to the Louisiana border, he’s south Mississippi. He’s a farmer, been a farmer all of his life. His grandfather was a farmer, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, they’ve been farming since 1889, that’s 24 years after the end of the Civil War. They got a 164 acres homestead which has helped his family to build wealth throughout the years, from generation from generation.

And Ben, why that’s so important to me is that the average white family in the U.S. today have a net worth of $171,000 and the average black family has a net worth of $17,000 and to be a farmer in your community in Mississippi, never thought about this because I always thought that the folks in the south, black folks were in really bad shape, but those ones that were able to get land had been able to increase their net worth so that I would imagine that 320 acres in your family is worth a whole lot more than $17,000 plus the equipment you all have, whatever money you’ve been able to save, whatever, other things you’ve invested in, whatever equipment you have.

So, your net worth is a whole lot more than $17,000; that’s the average of black families.

BEN BURKETT: Absolutely, I would agree with you. Every slice of land here is farmland is $5,100 an acre. If you do the math and see how much the land is worth itself.

VERNON OAKES: Well, doing the math, taking it by $5,000 that’s $1.6 million, just the land by itself. All right, and the other thing that I found interesting that you said that I really want to get to young people out there, you said it’s not only owning the land or being inherited this land from your father, who inherited from his grandfather and on your mother’s side your great grandfather, but you had to learn how to manage it. So, you need a good management and you need a good education so that you know how to manage it and you went to Alcorn State for four years, graduated with an agriculture and economics degree.

So, the economics was how do you, how do you manage money, what do you take care of that and agriculture was how do you farm and know how to farm and know how to plant, and when to plant and what to do and how to make sure that rabbits don’t eat your stuff and whatever stuff that [indistinct] take over here.

BEN BURKETT: The deer and the turkeys and [indistinct] everything. And you got to be able to adapt, you know, I started off growing cotton. The university taught me that I could go back home and just grown one crop of cotton and make a good living. That lasted for three or four years and the cotton market went bad and then we grew soybeans, grew wheat, grew corn. But, we always grew vegetables, we always had a market, we had a contract with Vlasic for pickles up in the 1995, whenever they signed NAFTA, that’s when we lost that contract. But, we grew pickles on the contract.

We had a contract with the Tabasco for long red cayenne. I’m planting 2,000 of them Monday morning, peppers, the kind that make the tabasco sauce. We had contracts for peas and butterbeans. We don’t have none of that now. I contribute it to NAFTA, but I might be wrong. But, now we have to rely totally on the fresh market, like the restaurants and the stores. With the restaurants closed in New Orleans and Mobile because of the virus, we in limbo now. We got to crop, almost ready to harvest in 2-1/2 weeks and we really don’t know where it’s going to go.

So, that’s some of the things you have to contemplate in farming, you know. Even with the best of plans, two factors always come in play and that’s weather and the marketplace because it fluctuates, in the last 10 years I would say. As a farmer you have to really deal with that.

VERNON OAKES: So, I want to talk about two things now. I want to talk about the co-op; you belong to five, you belong to several others and then you work even with others. So, I would imagine the whole time, your whole life you’ve been in farming you’ve been on co-ops, is that a true statement?

BEN BURKETT: I was, ever since I was 25. So, that’s been, well over, right at 50 years almost, yes sir, uh huh. And my co-op [indistinct] federation started the cooperative in 1981.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, let’s talk about these co-ops. What is spring farmers co-op?

BEN BURKETT: That’s a marketing production co-op. Like I said, we got 34 members now and we are, you go there, you go to the co-op to purchase your seed, fertilize and chemicals and then when you make your crop you bring it back there and the co-op markets it for you and then as a farmer I got to get it to the co-op warehouse and the co-op’s responsibility is to find a market for you. We sell produce as far away as Canada. So, we, Chicago, Boston, New York, and then last five years been in New Orleans, Memphis, Mobile mostly, regional I would say.

And so, the co-op have refrigerated trucks, cold storage, packaging, we can even, we can process it, we can shell the peas and put them in one-pound bags, cut the squash and cucumbers up in five-pound bags. Most are for food service and the food service, they down over 50-percent. So, this virus is really, we dependent on the government to bail us farmers out too, like they did like everybody else. So, this round, a farmer can actually apply for the covid relief through their local bank, but many of our farmers don’t keep adequate documentation.

So, we going to have to work with those farmers to make sure they get their application in the next week or so, which we are doing now. So, the co-op has got a place, you know, in this community.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, so there are four types of co-ops. If the co-op is owned and controlled by the employees, it’s called a worker co-op, if the co-op is owned and controlled by the people that uses the product and service it’s called a consumer co-op, and a consumer co-op that you talked about are your electric co-op, your water co-op, those are consumer co-ops. And then if the, well, the other one is a credit union, then if the co-op is like the farmers used a lot is a purchasing co-op where you buy the seed and fertilizer and sometimes equipment is called a purchasing co-op and then if it’s a marketing co-op then it takes the products, like you said, Indian Springs cooperative does, and it will add value to it by packing it, storing it, transporting it.

You take it to the co-op, you are responsible for the transportation to get it to the co-op and then the co-op is responsible transporting it to whatever market whether that’s south in New Orleans or north to Chicago. So, that’s how the co-ops function where you as an individual farmer couldn’t get to all of these different markets and you are a member of five co-ops.

BEN BURKETT: I wouldn’t have the volume to load an 18-wheeler. Most of the time we have to have three to four farmers to come up with that amount of product.

VERNON OAKES: So, that’s how the co-ops work and we’re going to take our second break here and come back and I want to talk about when you say we help the farmers with the finance, getting the financial stuff, who’s that we? I assume that the Federation of Southern Co-Ops, so I’d like for you to talk about that umbrella organization and we’ll be right back.

VERNON OAKES: Welcome back everybody. The program is Everything Cooperative and I’m Vernon Oakes, the host of the show and we have Mr. Ben Burkett on the line with us from Mississippi, who is a farmer, fourth generation farmer. His daughter’s in farming and that’s a fifth generation. The National Co-Op Bank sponsors this program. NCB’s mission is to support and be an advocate for America’s cooperatives and their members, especially in low-income communities by providing innovative financial and related services. The National Cooperative Bank is the only bank dedicated to delivering nationwide banking products and solutions through cooperatives and member owned organizations to help communities strive, to help communities strive.

So, that’s one of the things NCB does, Ben, and we were talking about the Federation of Southern Co-Ops right before the break. So, the Indian Springs Cooperative became a member of the Federation of Southern Co-Ops, so let me just shout out to Cornelius Blanding and the folks at Federation of Southern Co-Ops and I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Ralph Paige and interviewed him a couple times.

As a matter of fact, the first Thanksgiving that we had 5-1/2 years ago, he came on this show Thanksgiving morning. He said his wife allowed him to come on this show first before they ate dinner that evening. Just a great human being. I was glad to meet him before he passed on.

BEN BURKETT: Yes he was, yes he was. He helped a lot of people including, even Indian Spring Farmer’s Association when we were getting ready to build our current warehouse.

VERNON OAKES: What was the reason for forming Federation of Southern Co-Ops and why did Indian Springs join them?

BEN BURKETT: See the reason for the federation was so that all us grassroots cooperatives could speak as one voice and we have membership from Texas to South Carolina, we have some members in virtually every southern state. So, we are organized into the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and then you have the state associations. Like, here we have the Mississippi Association of Cooperative, and Alabama State Association, Texas association, Georgia State Association. So, here in Mississippi we have 22 cooperative members, that’s members of the federation here in the state of Mississippi.

The federation maintains an office in Jackson, Mississippi and a nine person staff scattered all over the state that helps farmers and credit unions and when I saw we, I’m a part of that staff. So, in the last four weeks we’ve been taking surveys of our membership, what’s the impact of this virus on our co-op. But if cooperatives have [indistinct] the impact on individual farmers. So, we’ll get all that compiled, all that information. Tomorrow is our deadline to get it all to our Atlanta office and then [SOUNDS LIKE: lester bland] and his staff will see whatever support out there for us as farmers.

You know, farming is a 24-hour a day job and if you’re really farming, you really don’t have the time and I’m thinking about myself, because of this, the way it is now, everything is on the computer. They got conference calls, they got Zoom, they got facetime, and where I’m at, we don’t have fast speed internet. So, if we want to be on Zoom it usually don’t work because our internet is so slow and it draws down so much energy when you’re on the net. So, we usually have to be on the computer and the phone to be on a call.

And then we rely on our staff of the federation to keep us informed of how we’re going to apply for that relief and help us step by step on filling out those documents. The staff person assigned to us out of this area, Mr. Bond, is out today, going from farm to farm with his laptop. Sometimes he has to write it on paper and then he goes back in the town of Hattiesburg where they got the fast internet, then he upload it. But, the school temporarily, I don’t know, they parked a bus out here at the church and that church pulls in the internet over this community, but it ain’t working too well.

But that’s one of the major problems, you know, technology. But, even I’m fairly good on the computer, but most of our farmers don’t, have never touched a computer in their life. [indistinct] type of system that we get from the federation and association and other groups that’s out trying to help African American farmers, small farmers, you know. Because the USDA office is closed, so I had to turn in some documents on my call share. I went to the office, the office closed, but I had to make an appointment at a certain time and one of the staff at USDA would be there to meet me outside in the parking lot, pick up the paperwork. So, it’s for real. We got to cope with it, we got to learn how to adapt and continue on in order to stay in the business.

VERNON OAKES: So, What I’m hearing you say is that the individual farmer, particularly smaller farmer, but maybe all farmers, if you’re an individual farmer you don’t have the bandwidth, you don’t have the resources to do everything you need, you’ve got to buy stuff, you got to plant it and harvest it or grow stuff, and then you’ve got to sell it. You got this whole process, you said 24-hour, seven day a week job and you can’t do it all so you create these businesses that help you to buy stuff and Indian Springs does that for you and then you create a business to help you to sell stuff, that that gets part of that off your back to do.

You have staff to help you do that, so you create co-ops, working together as groups of farmers. You create a co-op to help you get done so you can survive and minimize your risk. You already got the risk of the weather and the market, and so to get rid of some of the risk of production and selling, promoting, you create these co-ops. Then Indian Springs joins the federation which is an umbrella of co-ops that are state by state. So, you got 34 co-ops in Indian Springs and 22 co-ops in Mississippi that belong to the federation.

So, then the federation has a bigger voice. They have staff that goes out and helps to pull information, to give you information and then get information from you to take to the federal government or wherever they have to do to advocate for you to get your loans or get equipment or get knowledge. And I know the federation has training because I’ve been to a couple of your annual meetings in Birmingham and Epes, Alabama. So, you work together as a group; that gives you data, that gives you power as a group, you pass information back and forth and from what I gather and, Ben, those conferences you get friends, you get community.

BEN BURKETT: Right.

VERNON OAKES: Yeah, okay.

BEN BURKETT: Yeah. I got farmers in Georgia, we talk at least two or three times a week. I got one in Texas that I have met through the federation annual meeting in August. And I can, I can gauge the market by talking with them in Georgia and Florida because their crops are two weeks earlier than our crops. So, if I know what’s going on over there I know how to market on this end, what’s the price range. You’re absolutely right, us being members like that and meeting people from Carolinas and Missouri, it’s just a wonderful relationship and we learn how to network and work together.

We have loaded a truck here with produce and the farmers in Kentucky would call us and say they have 10,000 pounds of cabbages and when we get through Marion, Illinois, they would meet us there and put their cabbage on our truck, then we go on into Chicago.

VERNON OAKES: Wow, that’s really working together.

BEN BURKETT: And that, and that’s one of our white co-op members to in the Ozark mountains, you know, we have white co-op members and Native American, Hispanic. One thing about the federation, we, we have, you know, cotton farmers, rice farmers, vegetable farmers, [indistinct] farmer, tobacco farmer. This federation is diverse and sometimes we have some real, real discussions. I know when the tobacco settlement came along and men of the federation for the tobacco farmers, we had a big discussion on are we going to support it or not support it. Some of the, that was some of the best crops you could grow at the time for income for a small farmer.
I remember [indistinct] from the meeting, it got very heated.

VERNON OAKES: I get that, but here’s what I’m hearing you say, sir, I mean, one of the reasons why I like this co-op model and I learned about it through housing co-op, was another form of a consumer co-op, but it’s, it’s, the first one was that I really like was this fifth principle of education that you end up training each other and giving information, like I said, federation, gets information from you and then gives information to you and there’s always this training going on.

And then the other one, which you just talked about, is volunteer and open membership. It doesn’t make any difference what your gender is, what your social background, your political, your racial, religious, there’s none of those kinds of things that we see in America that discrimination doesn’t happen in co-ops. If it’s a true co-op and operating as a co-op as the federation does, and Indian Springs does, it will take white members, black members. The focus had been on smaller black farmers because of the discrimination both in the U.S. government and discrimination with the buyers and the U.S., just being black in America.

But, it doesn’t what I have found out growing up in West Virginia, Ben, I assume you found this out too, poverty does not discriminate. It don’t care if you’re white, black, pink, green, or orange it just doesn’t discriminate. It [indistinct] just the same.

BEN BURKETT: Absolutely right, absolutely right. And this part of Mississippi where I’m at, there’s no big, big farm. So, we were forced to work together, black farmers or white folk. Three of my neighbors are white farmers, three sides of my property and they are third and fourth generations like I am. But, we always work together in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, 2000’s. My neighbor’s got a piece of equipment I need to borrow, I don’t even have to tell him. I just go hook up, use it and come back and then I can, I tell him I borrowed and I bought it back.

In the spring I forgot to [indistinct] it was a white farmer in the [indistinct] and we have six members now, so we always have been, you know. But that need, what you said earlier, when you’re poor trying to make it, you tend to work together regardless.

VERNON OAKES: You have to, have to. The other couple things about the principles you have to have autonomy and independence, to have to own and control it and it’s one member, one vote. It doesn’t make any difference how much wealth you have or what color you are or any of that is, one member, one vote.

BEN BURKETT: One vote. And when my local co-op we set up you have to buy one share of stock, well, it’s $200 to become a member and carry a vote. But, you can buy, some of our members got five or six shares, but only one share carries a vote.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, one member, one vote.

BEN BURKETT: We learn how to work together and it works in places and it’s not unique to here, it’s all over the south, you know, and there’s multiple co-ops being formed. I had a gentleman call me a few days ago about they want to start like a buy co-op in Biloxi, Mississippi. They, they seeing now that they need to be able to purchase their food and [indistinct] and distribute it out into the [indistinct] [overlap].

VERNON OAKES: We got to take our final break. I’m sorry I was trying to let you get that in there. We’ll be right back because I want to get to coronavirus. We’ll be right back, don’t touch that dial.

VERNON OAKES: Welcome back everybody, this is Vernon Oakes and the program is Everything Cooperative. Mr. Ben Burkett, who is a farmer in Mississippi. He also works with the Federation of Southern Co-ops to help other farmers. Ben, we’ve talked about to be a farmer there’s a lot of risk, weather, predatory, whether their rabbit or deer or anything else and then you have the risk of price, what you buy stuff from and what you sell stuff to and how you get it to market and then you have to be able to adapt, no matter, all kinds of reasons to adapt. At one point you had cotton, then you had to go to soybean, the cotton market goes out.

So, you have all of these different risks and the risk right now is coronavirus. So, what, what are you finding out I guess through your work with the federation, both as a farmer, what is this coronavirus did, you said the markets are not there, the Louisiana restaurant markets have gone down maybe 50-percent. So, what are the kinds of things that the co-ops, Indian Springs, federation, other co-ops are doing to overcome this coronavirus?

BEN BURKETT: This started, it started real bad in the city of New Orleans which is when I made the market in the area, we had six restaurants, three stores and four farmers markets all closed. So, we technically lost most of our markets. But, it happened had a fairly good time because we was in between crops. The leafy green season was over and now with spring vegetables, squash, cucumbers, and okra and they were not quite ready, but they will be ready in a couple of week, three weeks at the most. And we started talking with the buyers, but nobody is buying.

The one big thing is the impact on the marketplace. We have decreased market for what we produce and the other one is like when you have a co-op facility, your costs of doing business continue without any sales, you know, the light bill, the storage upkeep, all that stuff got to be paid, but, you’re not selling anything. So, that’s putting a hardship on the cooperative itself. Labor and things, you [indistinct] you know, lay people off, but you don’t want to, but you don’t have no other choice or you can’t pay them. So, that’s another layer.

And then navigating the system of how to apply to receive the relief is another. You know, that why we need assistance again because [indistinct] everything is being done on the computer. You know, we’ll go to the office and sit down with an individual and fill out the paperwork. Many of our farmers and I put myself in that category, is not that good on the computer. So, we have to rely upon, in my case, on my daughter and granddaughter and a staff person from the federation to come around and help us fill out the necessary paperwork, upload it in the computer so we get it in on time. I know I worked with [indistinct] out here in Mississippi to get my documentation in and it’s been a tedious process and then we have to work [indistinct], on the other end we trying to become a distributor.

We have the co-op warehouse but we don’t have nothing in there, but we can, if people want to donate food, because we have the storage capacity, we want to be a part of that so we can, if somebody want to donate us some potatoes or whatever, we’ve got a place to store it, repackage it and get it out to the people that need it, which we are doing a little of that now. We have some products at the co-op now.

So, that’s some of the situation we’re in. [indistinct] in the future for the rest of the year, the planters don’t plant. Well, usually in most cases you, you’re going to have to plant, [indistinct] you got to have some income to pay your bills. So, there’s really not, that’s not a big decision to make, you’re going to try to have some [indistinct], but you just about got to continue to produce. I listened to NPR early this morning about the hog farmers and the processing places. They’re not processing, but the hog is ready to be processed. So, now they’ve been just kill some hogs. This one farm he said he had 320 head every week that need to go to the slaughter house, he’s two weeks behind.

So, you know, come by Monday or Tuesday he’s going to euthanize them. Well, that’s the situation the farmer’s in, you know. You just have, you have to look at the options and continue. But, it’s for real, this situation we’re in.

VERNON OAKES: So, I got for the farmer the difficulty is that you, your stores, you just named six restaurants, three stores and four farmers markets, they all closed down, so did the markets close. You’ve got stuff coming up that’s got to be harvest, you’ve got to figure out what to do with that. Your bills, both your particular bill as a farmer and Indian Springs bills go up, the facility that they use to refrigerate and process the, the material that you all sent to them and all of those costs continue. You don’t want to lay people off, but you may have to.

And then you’ve got to, if the government is going to give out bail out money, you’ve got to be able to apply for, do the paperwork and that’s the accounting, your profit and loss balance sheet and all of that stuff and how many employees you had and your, your employee payroll and all that. To get all of that information and that means that somebody’s got to do that work and the federation, Indian Springs is working with the farmers in Mississippi and Mississippi office of the federation is working and then the federation is working and then you have your daughter and granddaughter helping you with the computer. Okay.

BEN BURKETT: That’s right. She’s five years old.

VERNON OAKES: Your granddaughter’s five?

BEN BURKETT: Five and know how to turn it on and I said, what is this?

VERNON OAKES: All right so you start her off very early on in the business. She’s got to learn this business and start them off very early on.

BEN BURKETT: Right. I told you the story her and I were in the field getting some weeds out of the field, she’s five years old and her momma had bought her a toy, I thought it was a toy garden hoe, but it was a real garden hose. So, we got through walking out in the field. I said, “let me pay you,” I paid her $5 and we walked a little further, she looked at me and said, “let me pay you,” she gave me a quarter.

VERNON OAKES: That girl, she’s a business person, okay, okay. She got $5 and gave you a quarter and she has a real tool, she has a piece of equipment she can go out and help you weed, a garden hoe.

BEN BURKETT: It was real. I thought it was a toy, but it was a real garden hoe made out of metal just like the real one. I thought, I came in the house and told my niece. But, you know, it’s, it’s, we try to teach in the federation three things, hold on to your land, work together, and always look to the future and [indistinct]. You can always change and get enough forces together. Like, we tried to change the laws here in Mississippi as it relates to air problem. We tried to work on the federal level to change some of the policies. You know, like here in Mississippi you can’t, you can’t get a charter to have a house co-op. So, we tried, we went to the state legislature to change the co-op law here in the state of Mississippi and get all, have charters, we have a [indistinct], there’s no way you can get it.

We wanted to start a house cooperative owned by the people that stay in the household, we’re working on both of those for the last couple of years to change the law.

VERNON OAKES: All right, we only have a few minutes left and I’d like to get this question to you before we go off and that is what do you see the role of the cooperative after the pandemic? I mean, we get through it, we work through it, we work together, as you said, you hold on to the land, you work together and you, you look toward the future. So, looking toward the future, what do you see the role of co-ops after pandemic?

BEN BURKETT: I think cooperatives is being re-evaluated by everything from the healthcare industry to the workers’ owned co-op. It’s a golden opportunity to see how cooperative can be a major player in every area of society; with healthcare, with food, with transportation. There’s just so much we can do together and I think, like the gentleman I say call from Biloxi, they were looking at how they can co-op and look to better serving their community as a food co-op. I think since this pandemic many people have been quarantined such as myself, you have time to re-evaluate. There’s a lot of things we thought we need we don’t need and a lot of things that we can do together. I look at the, I look at that [indistinct] on the television where the people were just, they couldn’t go outside, so everybody would just come out on their balcony and just sing to each other. That’s cooperation there. [overlap]

VERNON OAKES: Sir, we got to go, we got to quit [overlap]…

BEN BURKETT: [overlap] A golden opportunity for us to bring about a change.

VERNON OAKES: All right, let’s bring about a change and work together as a cooperative and look toward the future. Ben Burkett thank you so very much. Everybody out there, have a wonderful week and live cooperatively.