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Paul Sangha:
The reason why I say it was tough was because there were people that did understand that I looked different and it was a bit difficult because people had their opinions and they like to voice those opinions.

Speaker 2:
This is the Real Food, Real People, podcast.

Dillon Honcoop:
Their families came from India to the US just a few decades ago and they’ve made a life for themselves farming raspberries and blueberries here in the Pacific Northwest. This week on the podcast, I talk with Jiwan Brar and Paul Sangha, both young berry farmers who grew up in my neighborhood doing the same farming that my family was doing, but with an entirely different cultural backstory, well, at least in some ways. As you’ll hear in our conversation, although our heritage is from opposite sides of the globe, our immigrant families, mine from the Netherlands theirs from India, share so many things in common.

Dillon Honcoop:
I’m Dillon Honcoop. Thanks for joining me on this continuing journey to hear the real personal stories of farmers in Washington state that we call the Real Food, Real People podcast. Again, with Jiwan Brar and Paul Sangha today. When did you first think of yourself as a farmer? Have you always thought of yourself as that? Because you grew up like me with your dad farming.

Paul Sangha:
Right. Yeah, almost just down the road from you.

Dillon Honcoop:
Right.

Paul Sangha:
No, I’ve always considered myself a farmer. Definitely. [inaudible 00:01:39] politically right but I was a farmer at like five-year-old for sure. Just because I was on, you name the tractor, you name the piece of equipment. I was on it of course, just having fun at that time, but still working. So no, I’ve been a farmer my entire life, I’ve been involved in agriculture my entire life and I think it had a big part in just kind of continuing on through grade school and everything and going into everything, just simply watching my dad and how big of a part it was for him. It summed up being the foundation of our entire family and for me after dad kind of later in went into retirement. We do other things outside of farming now, but that’s one thing we’ve never let go because it’s just such a big part of the pillar that we stand on and will help provide everything we do. I’ve been a farmer definitely entire life.

Dillon Honcoop:
What about you Jiwan? When did you start like thinking of yourself as that? Because you’ve kind of always been into it too, right?

Jiwan Brar:
Same thing basically my entire life. I grew up on a farm day one, just anything I could do help out, hang out. I just wanted to be out there with my dad and that was the biggest thing where I just had that connection with him and… since day one. And then now I really got into it after high school. I got more and more involved into it and up till now I consider myself more of a farmer now than I was back then.

Dillon Honcoop:
Now you’re going to school, right? To continue in agriculture to do even more stuff, right?

Jiwan Brar:
Yes, that’s right. So I’m going to school to get a degree and my goal is to become an agronomist, a crop advisor, that would be my goal.

Dillon Honcoop:
What about you Paul? I mean, we’re I think same class, like 2001 that you graduated high school?

Paul Sangha:
2002, so yeah.

Dillon Honcoop:
Oh two. So you’re younger than me?

Paul Sangha:
Yep, right after you.

Dillon Honcoop:
What did you do after high school?

Paul Sangha:
Well, right after high school, I continued education but I fell just headfirst right into our family business. At that point dad had started the first… Well sorry not the first but the first Indian American, I guess East Indian processing plant of raspberries and that quickly just enveloped me and my older sister really led us into kind of understanding what the business behind agriculture is and we got a good understanding of that. We were at that point, sitting on about dad was farming or we as a family were farming close to 250 acres at that time too and so it was a big undertaking. And I remember dad kind of told us, “All hands on deck right now because we all need to be involved in this.” And we definitely were and so I just say I went headfirst into that and just never looked back.

Paul Sangha:
And it developed into just something bigger and bigger that kept growing. I would remember even when I was 12, but definitely after high school and going to school and everything, I remember sitting in conference rooms with big buyers of big products. I remember sitting one time with the guys that do catalog and you know the companies that do that and…

Dillon Honcoop:
Like Breakfast Cereal.

Paul Sangha:
Breakfast Cereal guys and Kroger and these guys and now you think of them and you think, “Oh, it’s probably just a easy way to meet.” But then you’re driving hours and hours and sitting in a pickup truck and going to meet with them and it was a definite learning experience.

Dillon Honcoop:
What does it take to grow amazing blueberries since you guys are really… I guess you’ve instilled us some raspberries so we could talk about raspberries too but what makes for incredible blueberries?

Paul Sangha:
Want me to take this one or do you want to take it?

Jiwan Brar:
I think it has to do with our area where we live. Our environment takes our farmers, including myself and Whatcom County farmers, everyone’s committed, they’re passionate and I feel like that drive gives us a better product overall.

Paul Sangha:
I completely agree. My main focus to answer that question would just be the passion part. It takes passion. If there’s something about taking a baby plant of anything and planting it in the ground and raising that thing like a baby of your own and having it produced and getting excited about what it’s producing and the quality that’s coming out. If you don’t have that passion from within, then you won’t get the quality and it goes to show about this area. The quality that comes out of here is because of the passion that people have. And again, I get to visit a lot of different growers in a lot of different products, they’re all passionate about what they have. They’ll walk up and down their fields and everything and they know every inch of their ground and what is going on with their ground and they’re taking care of their product.

Paul Sangha:
Jiwan has got a lot of wisdom. I actually call Jiwan myself when I’ve got questions on any sort of programs that we need to be applying. But if he didn’t have the passion, he wouldn’t really be able to tell me. And a lot of people can just give their local agronomists a call and know what to do and put on and you show up once a week or once a month to do that but the guys that are there every day, which is what I see around here, that’s what gets us a quality that we have

Dillon Honcoop:
Jiwan, how did you learn all that stuff? Like, because you’re still in school to be an agronomist but you’re already doing a lot of this really.

Jiwan Brar:
That passion he’s talking about, right? Like that’s been there since day one. Just going to the farm with my dad picking up on things he’s doing, picking up on things that we talked to our agronomist about and just being in it. Driving through a farm in a nice pickup truck with the windows down just doing a lap around the farm, it’s not farming. The best thing for a farm as a farmer’s footsteps, right? Until you get out there and you walk the farm and you experience that, that’s the best and that’s where that comes from, right? That’s what makes our berries so good, you know? And for me, I’m a college student but just because I spend eight hours a day at college, it doesn’t mean I… I come home, I have to go walk around the farm. I can’t just come home and start studying.

Dillon Honcoop:
That reminds me even back to high school and how summertime you guys all had the same experience that I did too growing up in this community and with the family farms, you all grew up on family berry farms like I did. Summertime is like, that’s not a time to slow down or go on vacation.

Jiwan Brar:
No, that’s just…

Dillon Honcoop:
Who goes on vacation and especially in July, if you’re in raspberries a little bit later and blueberries,

Paul Sangha:
Oh boy. I don’t eve know, 35 years old. I’ve never had a summer. In those terms, I’ve never really had a summer but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jiwan Brar:
It was so weird like I feel like elementary, I’m like middle school it was kind of confusing for me I was like, I’d hear all my classmates who’d come and be like, “Oh, I just got back from Hawaii or I just got back from like Alaska fishing.” Or something like that and I’m like, “You do that in summer? You guys don’t pick berries?” Oh my gosh.

Paul Sangha:
Every single day during the season, we’re like 16 plus hours and it doesn’t just end when you start picking and turn the picker off or the harvester turns off, you just don’t go home. I mean there’s a lot that goes into the process of waking up the next morning and having everything ready and it’s 5:00 AM and then you’re… you know, midnight for us, especially for anything we do at the plant now and anyone else, I know that a lot of people around here they’re around their plants, they live there. When you’re sleeping on the couch there sometimes and during lot of those nights but I guess it’s part of what it is. It’s part of the industry and that’s where again, I say the word passion, not passionate about it? It’s hard to do it.

Jiwan Brar:
It’s hard to like picture a billionaire farmer, you know what I mean? Like some magazine because it’s just like everybody is… You’re doing it because you’re passionate and that’s the biggest driving factor.

Dillon Honcoop:
Do you ever stop and think, “This is crazy. I wish I could go to Hawaii in the summer time. I need to do something different.”

Paul Sangha:
I think every other day. Well, yeah you definitely think that. You think, “Oh man.” And I think that comes with any job. My sisters have moved on and my older sister lives in Seattle and she’s been in between LA and Seattle and she works the eight to fives and does really well for herself but she has the same thoughts. She grew up on a farm and she has that background, so she has that work ethic where she sticks to it and we talk kind of like what you’re mentioning now and we think like, “Man, do you think it’d be different if dad had just done like an eight to five and then we’d just gone to school and done our eight to fives and everything?”

Paul Sangha:
And it was, yeah, but then I don’t think we would have been happy at all. I’m talking to my wife now too, and my wife, her background isn’t anything in farming so she kind of had to learn on the fly when we got married and she definitely understands too that the happiness and joy that it brings to do this, of course you get to go to Hawaii. During the winter time, you can go, I guess we have to find selective areas that are warm in the winter because that’s when we seem to have time but…

Jiwan Brar:
Yeah, exactly.

Paul Sangha:
The happiness you find while you’re out there is like being in Hawaii all in itself, you know, when you’re out there. Not every day is all Hawaii sometimes it’s a little stressful too but you have your good times too.

Dillon Honcoop:
So talk to you guys, what’s the relation? You are cousins?

Jiwan Brar:
We’re cousins yup.

Dillon Honcoop:
Talk about the family background because I’m thinking about this, you say a lot of this has to do with how you were raised and your dad and growing up around him, same with you Jiwan.

Jiwan Brar:
Yes.

Dillon Honcoop:
And not just your dad, but your uncles and the larger family. Same with my background with my Dutch heritage people coming here, you folks also coming from India, that goes back generations of farming too, right? Farming, even back in the home country same with my Dutch family.

Jiwan Brar:
Oh yeah.

Dillon Honcoop:
You wonder how much that is just in the blood.

Paul Sangha:
Oh yeah, definitely. We’re both sons of immigrants, immigrant parents. When dad first came here, dad started a small little 10 acre raspberry farm and soon after when… Jiwan is my mom’s brother’s son, that’s how we’re related.

Dillon Honcoop:
Okay.

Paul Sangha:
And soon after when my uncle, Jiwan’s dad came here it was kind of a partnership without ever being an actual partnership because what you do is you work with family and you help family and that’s priority. So culturally, background in India, your proof and how you prove yourself there too is your land, how you work Atlanta and how you provide for your family. You’re an honest day’s work, that’s the way to sum it up. So that definitely traveled here with them and they knew what they wanted to do. They knew what they were good at, they knew that they could farm, they knew they could learn and that’s definitely what dad and our entire larger scale family did.

Paul Sangha:
Luckily there were no I guess iPhones or iPads and things back then and they didn’t have time to let themselves get distracted with anything so they definitely did put their head down and just kept working and grew and grew from there. But their family has been a big part. We’re still to this point, Jiwan has 500 acres at this point and it’s almost like a partnership without ever being on paper. But for us the family isn’t just directly us, the family is everybody. And that includes even far away, aunts and uncles. When they’re here, they are helping out or we’re traveling other places to help them and make sure they succeed. Again and that comes back from this area and where we grew up. There’s a mentality out here, just like you’re mentioning a completely different background back in the day generations ago but still we have that help each other mentality.

Jiwan Brar:
Help each other mentality where real farmers, real family, right? Real family farmers.

Dillon Honcoop:
What made your families decide to come here of all places that they could have gone? And why into fruit farming raspberry and now blueberry farming too? I mean, what was the background in India? If there’s farming background in your family, what kinds of things were they farming there?

Paul Sangha:
There they were farming, rice, wheat, corn.

Jiwan Brar:
Potato.

Paul Sangha:
A lot of potato but in India the scale isn’t as big. There is more of five, 10 acre farmers and that’s big. Everything was done by hand. You think wheat, corn, potatoes, you think, “Oh, there’s 1000 acre farms out there.” But in India you got five, 10 acre guys, you have the 20 acre guys and then 30 acre guys. There’s not very many big farms out there but with the equipment there is out there, 30 acre farm out there is pretty big.

Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. You know a lot of stuff to do by hand probably.

Paul Sangha:
Yeah. And I think when dad came here, just before he came was the first time they bought a tractor only in here for 35 plus years and he had just bought a tractor before he was leaving then and I think it was like in the entire village or villages where they live there and they have everything that was like the second tractor anyone had ever even bought there. But when you talk about hand labor for everything that was intensely hand labor and they were doing the whole, you know they had on the Hala, no…

Jiwan Brar:
Chisel plows.

Paul Sangha:
Chisel plows, yeah. The chisel claws were actually on any of the bulls or anything that they had and that’s how they were plowing, like a horse or bulls usually back then or I don’t know if on a bull on bull, but…

Jiwan Brar:
Like an ox, right?

Paul Sangha:
Ox, yeah.

Jiwan Brar:
Like an ox. It’s like my grandpa, his dad passed when he was eight. My grandpa was born in 1925 and he’s been farming since basically eight years old and plowing when he was… In his teenage years he was telling me he’s like, he used to plow with a single bottom plow. Plowing an acre with a single bottom plow adds up to eight acres and having to walk eight acres up and down that’s a lot of ground.

Dillon Honcoop:
A lot of steps.

Jiwan Brar:
Yeah.

Dillon Honcoop:
You racked up a lot of stuff on his Fitbit I’m sure. If only those people had…

Paul Sangha:
To get it linked to his iPhone and everything so you could see it instantly right away.

Dillon Honcoop:
Imagine with those past generations, and I think about back in my family too, and some of the things that they did just to be able to succeed or they worked? If that was tracked with a Fitbit, how bad it would put us to shame.

Paul Sangha:
Oh, jeez, no kidding. I don’t think we’d be doing anything better compared to that.

Jiwan Brar:
I don’t think I’d walk half that in a day.

Paul Sangha:
The reason why for dad… Dad’s older brother was here in the US and why come to America? I mean, because it might sound cliché okay but it’s the truth too, this is the greatest country in the world and we’ve been able to live it in as business, agriculture, any type of aspect as immigrants and we’ve seen that that’s true. And that’s what dad guys saw too. They saw an opportunity they came and worked hard and took advantage of that opportunity and they were lucky to be able to do that.

Dillon Honcoop:
Was there some kind of connection though in this region that brought them here specifically? I mean, because you really could choose a lot of places to go to.

Paul Sangha:
True. My dad’s older brother lived here.

Dillon Honcoop:
Okay.

Paul Sangha:
He was here originally. So dad’s older brother moved to the US he went to school here. Schooling and then after school he stayed here and moved up to Canada, lived there, came back and started farming then on this side of the border. And I think again, that was probably just because the cost difference between Canada and then it was still pretty revelent then too. So he started farming on this side and so he started having his family come and that’s when dad decided to come too and they worked together for a little bit and then dad bought his own 10 acre when he started, at least his own 10 acres.

Dillon Honcoop:
You talk about your family background and your cultural background, how much does that play into your farming now?

Paul Sangha:
Quite a bit.

Dillon Honcoop:
I mean, you’ve mentioned a lot about the family stuff and I think that’s a big part of it, right?

Paul Sangha:
It is, yeah. Family’s definitely a huge part of it. Culturally that’s just what’s… You mind your business, you do what’s right and you work hard. You think about community, you have a sense of community, which kind of relates to the sense of family and you make sure that not only you are moving up but the people around you are moving up as well and as a society you’re able to work together. Those kinds of teachings have kind of just always come down generationally and dad definitely passed those on to us. And it’s been a big part of what I’ve been able to grow up in Whatcom County here in Lynden and going through the school system in Lynden I saw it from everybody too.

Paul Sangha:
I was, I think one of three Indian kids that grew up here and so majority of my friends weren’t Indian but still I got to have that same mentality from anyone. A lot of dairy farmers, a lot of berry farmers and even guys that weren’t, were wanting to come over to our dairy farms and berry farms to hang out for the weekends. They didn’t want it to sit at home inside the city.

Jiwan Brar:
Friday night.

Paul Sangha:
On a Friday night you wanted to come over to our place.

Dillon Honcoop:
So it’s almost like that farming connection is stronger than…

Paul Sangha:
Oh, very much.

Dillon Honcoop:
The heritage and culture and race and all of that stuff that is supposed to divide people and it’s like, no, it’s the farming that’s bringing us together.

Paul Sangha:
That’s definitely the glue.

Dillon Honcoop:
Oh yeah.

Paul Sangha:
You know, we come from so many different backgrounds, but what’s the one thing that we have in common? We love the dirt we work on and that brings us all together.

Dillon Honcoop:
Before Jiwan, you and I had talked a little bit about what was that like growing up, but I probably even more for Paul you said there were only three Indian kids in school with you at that time?

Paul Sangha:
Three or four yeah.

Dillon Honcoop:
And that community had grown so much by the time you were in school.

Jiwan Brar:
Yeah. I mean, there is a lot more. I mean there’s maybe 15, 20, but that’s also like from ninth grade to 12th grade, right. From freshman to senior year, but that’s like maybe 30 kids, I want to say. But the community has definitely been growing. The Punjabi community Whatcom County it’s definitely been growing especially in Lynden, it’s growing and Bellingham. But before like when he went to school… only having… very few…

Paul Sangha:
Very few kids.

Dillon Honcoop:
What was that like?

Paul Sangha:
It was challenging at times. I had definitely had great times, I had great friends, still good friends and so I had a lot of support. I never really had to go through too much of a time where I had to really noticeably know that I looked different. But the reason why I say it was tough was because there were people that did understand that I looked different and it was a bit difficult because people had their opinions. I’ll just leave it at that. People had their opinions and they like to voice those opinions. It was hard to get through those but again I definitely say 99.9% of the community when I was going to school here in my high school days, 99.9% of the community was more understanding. So they were always willing to stand up and understand and glue we talked about just now the farming glue is what helped me with that.

Paul Sangha:
People knew that we’re not any different, we’re here putting her head down, doing the same work and more so than me. I know I had to see dad kind of go through those things and so I kind of was ready for it and I knew a little bit of what would come but I always kind of thought, “Hey, dad looked a lot different than everybody and if dad could do it then I’ve got nothing to whine about and I need to be able to get through it.” So it had its challenges but this place, this whole town and city of Lynden is Whatcom County itself has come a long ways from that time. I don’t see anything like that anymore. I don’t hear about anything or see anything like that anymore here.

Dillon Honcoop:
The reason I ask about school too is because that’s when sometimes some of that stuff can be the worst. These kids are brutal and when they don’t have filters, they just say terrible things sometimes.

Paul Sangha:
It helps when you throw a couple of river parties yourself and then everybody fits in. [crosstalk]

Jiwan Brar:
Down at the River Bar. [crosstalk] that glue gets even, you know, stronger.

Dillon Honcoop:
What about you Jiwan?

Jiwan Brar:
Honestly I can relate to everything he said but it was a Greek community we live in. But yeah, that glue and just bonding with everyone on those Friday nights, those Saturday nights after a football game that’s when the real bonding happened. And that just brought everyone closer and I got friends from high school, I still talk to now and yeah, I love it.

Dillon Honcoop:
How big of a role does faith play in what you guys do and how you approach farming and stuff like that? I know you guys have both been active in temple and whatnot.

Paul Sangha:
For myself, a big role because our faith is based around a sense of community and that plays a big role in the farming community as well so it’s easy to relate the two. Faith teaches us that you’re no more or no less than anybody else everybody’s equal. And look to help others as much as you’re helping yourself. So when you take those principles and you apply them to something like farming and we grow food, we grow stuff that people eat and it’s needed for life. Technology can keep getting as crazy as it is at the end of the day, you still have to eat something and of course we have our staples and we have commodities and different things but I like to think that people still want to eat their blueberries and raspberries and strawberries and marian cramp blackberries, everything.

Paul Sangha:
So that helps you really wrap your head around why you’re doing what you’re doing, when you… My own kids, they love to eat any fruit that’s out there and they’ll love to eat fruit. And I see a lot of tours, like one thing and I’m thankful to be a part of something like this, but all Whatcom Family Farmers, Save Family Farming, a set up tours for kids. These kids go out and they get to see firsthand what… And I’m not talking about the kids I get to live on farms, I’m saying kids that come out of the cities that never would have even understood what a harvester is or they say, “We hear John Deere and we think green. We think green and we see that little deer symbol.” They hear John Deere and they think of somebody, they’re trying to picture someone.

Jiwan Brar:
Like cows lay eggs or something like that.

Paul Sangha:
And so it’s amazing and that brings me back to how our faith definitely puts into that because it’s a faith in people working together and it’s a big part of it.

Dillon Honcoop:
And I think there’s a certain, I mean, whether it’s your faith background or mine, there’s a certain teaching within both of those traditions about valuing the earth and where we come from and what we eat and respecting and stewarding that, I guess.

Paul Sangha:
Huge, yeah.

Jiwan Brar:
That’s huge. Being a farmer, being passionate about what we do, the stewardship of the land is huge because that’s where we raise our crops. So if you don’t take care of that ground, we’re not going to have a good crop. So being sustainable and taking care of the ground is going to let us continue to do what we do.

Paul Sangha:
God gave us a beautiful earth and then he gave us the ability to cultivate ourselves on it. And so I’m trying to kind of draw a correlation about what you’re just saying, it’s our responsibility on how we treat it and what we do. I do hear a lot about it and I see a lot about how sometimes farmers are being blamed for a lot of different things that maybe are hurting the earth and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I mean it simply is, I mean, we eat the same product that we grow raw even at some point. I don’t tend to think that farm farmers are that dumb. It’s just simply put is what we do between our irrigations and our programs that we have in fields, no matter what part of the ag industry you’re in, if you don’t treat the land good, the land won’t treat you good.

Paul Sangha:
I mean, that’s our bread and butter. So if you’re not treating it well and it’s not treating you well, then you’re not going to survive. So we haven’t really, no other choice just to put it in basic terms, we have no choice but to keep things at a high quality. It gets a bit irritating sometimes to try to explain that to everybody and say, “Guys, we just don’t even have a different choice. We have to treat it right. We’re not doing anything to harm stuff here.” And I think people kind of get carried away with what they assume without really knowing.

Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, I feel that for sure from a lot of conversations I’ve had with people who it’s like some of the things that you’re accusing me or the people I know of, I don’t think any of us have ever even thought of doing that’s awful.

Paul Sangha:
Of course.

Dillon Honcoop:
Talking about the growing community of Punjabi folk here and the temple. I was at Vaisakhi celebration recently and that was so cool to see just how huge that community is. And I’m thinking about like back to that question of why here? Because I think about my community, this community is now known that we have this huge Dutch population. Yeah, there’s people from all different backgrounds, but a ton of Dutch people here and a ton of Indian people here.

Dillon Honcoop:
For the Dutch community, I think a lot of those people ended up here because the climate was so similar to back home and in Holland but that’s not true for your community and yet it continues to grow so much here. What is the reason for your community to grow so much here? Because I think it’s so cool and it’s fascinating to see why some white people and large groups of people together choose a place to kind of gather around.

Paul Sangha:
I feel that It’s like you’re saying the Dutch community is very big here and the Indian community is very big? When Indian people first got here I feel like there’s a lot of Indian people on the other side of the line in Canada. And for some family they want to be closer to their family. So a lot of people from California, Seattle further down South or even that are coming here from India want to move here because a lot of their family is in Canada. Yeah, they don’t live in Canada but they live in Lynden, which is only five minutes away from Canada. So I feel like that’s one reason why there’s a lot of Indian folk here.

Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, I just think about Like my ancestors being Dutch, okay, they’re used to this kind of weather but folks coming from India I could see would come here and say, “This weather sucks. It rains all the time.”

Paul Sangha:
And they do when they first get here. Oh my gosh. What is this?

Dillon Honcoop:
Why would you want to live here?

Paul Sangha:
This is the Pacific Northwest in itself and especially this corner up here is kind of one of the last areas where you really get just a breath of fresh air. For all of us that live here, kind of probably to understand what I’m saying when I say that is the greenery, the soils here, water here the quality of life here. Those things those are the draws to this area and it shows just from even Seattle people moving from Seattle up north to here, of what they’re looking for. So you can definitely look at a place like India and place like Punjab in India where it’s heavily populated and ground is scarce and water is hard to find and here you can come here and you can do the same type of work and put the same value into the work and get good results in a better community altogether.

Paul Sangha:
So I think all those combinations really come together and make people think, “Hey, how is that any help?” Say I’m this close to Canada and I’m a few hours outside of a big city if I need to go to Seattle for any reason or an airport if I need to fly out anywhere so it’s just a great place. You’ve got coast and you’ve got mountainous areas so you get the best of everything over here.

Dillon Honcoop:
And more and more people keep finding out about that and it kind of makes you want to say, “No, it’s actually terrible here don’t move here”

Paul Sangha:
“You know the Ring of Fire? We kind of sit right in it.”

Dillon Honcoop:
It’s volcano’s, earthquakes, yeah. [crosstalk] it rains all the time don’t move here.

Paul Sangha:
It is growing.

Jiwan Brar:
It’s really growing.

Dillon Honcoop:
What do you think the future is for farming and like for you guys? Especially blueberries and some raspberries and stuff, small fruits and more and more people are getting into this whole foodie thing and they want to know where their food comes from and they’re trying different stuff. Is it all about food and how much do you think about that and people’s eating habits and what people are into as far as food when you think about the future of what you’re producing?

Paul Sangha:
I kind of feel like it’s almost going to be back to the future type of thing. Early on it was kind of a lot of small farms with not fruit stands or that were take food to the market and it was a real organic feel to somebody being able to come buy fruit that they know that, hey, you just pick this as this fresh coming off your field. I see a lot of that kind of coming back. Not necessarily the exact same way, a lot more advanced and modernized type of that but I see a lot of farmers starting to probably get into seeing their product travel down the food chain line further more than just, “Hey, I harvested my fruit and here you go, and I’m just going to sit back and wait for my payment to come in the mail.”

Dillon Honcoop:
That’s the way it was in the old days too, right?

Paul Sangha:
Right.

Dillon Honcoop:
Like your family got into processing about the same time as mine did. To at least have a hand in that next step rather than just picking the berries, taking them to the dock at the cannery and they take it from there.

Paul Sangha:
Yeah. I don’t know what grading. I don’t even understand that and now people are getting more and more knowledge about what this is so I see if you look at that and then you look at again to bring up Seattle, the closest city. Anyone living in Seattle has grown up there and doesn’t understand the farming, but they know that, “Hey, eating fruits is good for me. Fruits and vegetables and eating food like that is going to be better for me in the long run.” They all make the trip down or up to see where is this coming from? And we’ve been watching so many years such a big growth in something like that and people want to know, even if you go to Costco where was this from? I want to know what the history of this pack of fruit is and I only think that’s going to grow more and more and people want more and more knowledge about where their fruit’s coming from, where their food’s coming from.

Paul Sangha:
And so for farmers here, the growth of it, I think farming is going to become bigger and bigger here for family farms. I think commercially people that are in vast large commercial business farming, you know, where a big corporation shows up and they own 1000 acres. They’ll always do well in business. But locally here, the family farms that have been sustaining for so long and continue to keep doing well because they’re going to be able to control that new generation of what they want.

Jiwan Brar:
Yeah. And kind of like that foodie thing you’re talking about. If you’re like consumers, they want that connection, right?

Paul Sangha:
Connection that’s it.

Jiwan Brar:
And to sustain that connection. That’s how it is going to go. Because they’ll want to come down and be like, “Hey, where is this coming from? Who is the farmer that grew this?” They want that connection or that package you’re saying that they’re going to buy a fruit. They want to see where is it from? Who’s the grower? How can I connect to this package of fruit? They know what’s good for them but they want to have that connection.

Dillon Honcoop:
You talk about that favoring more focus back on the smaller family farm kind of idea yet we hear a lot about the pressures of the economics of that and how you need a certain size just to be able to survive in this day and age. How’s that going to balance out?

Paul Sangha:
Yeah. So I will stick to everything I just said right there. Everybody wants to know where their food’s coming from as long as they can afford to even eat it and that directly falls on our industry, fruit industry. Fruit is something that everybody wants to eat and as not necessarily has to eat. What we know we always want is our potatoes and the things that we know are going to be staples. Actually Blueberries just turned staples and so affordability, the economics of it as a huge, huge thing. It’s getting really tight for a lot of family farmers not only is pricing structure and everything in the industry changing in itself and that’s because the demands are changing by the general public consumer, but even regulations. Regulations now are pushing us far into places where if you own 50 acres, you’re really only farming 35 of them at this point.

Paul Sangha:
You know the way you need to be and because say we’ve got a creek on one side and there’s more people watching us watch that creek than they are doing anything else. Our property again we happen to have a section where the government’s got some tower that they’re using there and the local government so there has to be a radius around that to allow access and everything and so those don’t even fall into regulations yet. Then it’s our food safety or labor laws, everything that’s just coming down on the small farmer and soon enough a 50 acre guy is now back in the day he used to be the five, 10 acre guy, that’s where we’re headed, we’re the small farm. Today we own 50 acres, we farm only 50 acres and we are the small farm out here.

Paul Sangha:
You guys went from 250 to 50 Gs and yeah, it feels like we went from 250 to maybe 15 and if we weren’t doing anything else with it, I mean it wouldn’t be much but there’s big changes coming up front and economically if the prices don’t go up unfortunately we have to rely on politics for a big part of that but if it doesn’t change, that’s going to lose a lot of family farms out here, if that landscape doesn’t change.

Dillon Honcoop:
You touched on labor, that’s a big one especially in the world of fruit. How has that been for you guys? Are you able to get enough labor? I’ve heard from a lot of farmers who can’t get enough people to come do… I mean, we were joking about harvest season and being high school kids. Well, not very many high school kids do that anymore. Who’s going to come and help us bring these crops in is a big question. Has that been an issue for you guys?

Jiwan Brar:
For us, we haven’t had an issue with labor, we have such a big family.

Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, that helps.

Jiwan Brar:
That helps a lot but I definitely see that becoming an issue as we continue to grow and get bigger. I mean our families aren’t getting bigger, but the demand for labor is also going to get more and more and I feel that other farms in our community are going to have to maybe outsource labor from maybe other countries and that’s going to help with the labor demand that we’re going to have here in the next maybe 10, 15 years. You’re saying, like in order to sustain it, you’ve got to keep getting bigger and bigger. And when you get bigger and bigger, you’re going to need more and more labor and there’s just not enough labor here.

Paul Sangha:
Labor is huge. I think labor is a forefront of what the main issues are that people are having to deal with. Again going back to our place of 50 acres, so affordability you really have to watch what you’re doing and how much you’re paying. The minimum wage just went to 13 now here.

Jiwan Brar:
13.50.

Paul Sangha:
13.50 here and so if you’re paying 13.50 and you’re usually having to pay more because you’re really trying to entice somebody to come and it’s hard to get somebody to work that many hours. So now we’re something we didn’t even use to do in the past. I didn’t know what was even existed in farming is like a double shift or night shift and day shift and those didn’t exist back in the day you did the day and you did the night shift. So when all those expenses are then leading you into, okay, well let’s think to the future and let’s think mechanical harvesting. Let’s get more robots involved and that’s what’s going to make it cheaper and that’s true, in the long run it is.

Paul Sangha:
But what does that cost? How much of what you’re doing did that give up? So you start kind of looking down the ladder economically and where this leads you to 50 acres have to be 100 now to be able to push those costs down and deflate those costs even more and not everybody is being able to sustain that. On the other end, you’re having to afford to do all these things that on the other end we’re still getting this year we might barely even get on product 50 cents and you’re thinking back to you, well it used to be 50 cents before two and I know now pennies carry or less value than they did then. So each penny matters a lot more now than it did then too not that it didn’t then but it’s just a lot harder now. So not enough people are happy to eat blueberries at higher expense or raspberries or anything, but they’re definitely…

Dillon Honcoop:
Well, they cost a lot more now in the store than they did back then.

Paul Sangha:
They do but I don’t think the translation definitely comes down to the farmer.

Dillon Honcoop:
We still see some of those field price numbers that are the same numbers as when you and I were a kid.

Paul Sangha:
That’s right, yeah.

Dillon Honcoop:
When we were both in high school.

Paul Sangha:
Almost less I think. Almost less even in some places farmers they always write it off to, hey it always rides that wave. You’ve got the good five and the bad five years and the good two years in the bad five years but I don’t know, I think it’s kind of… If you watch the graph, that line doesn’t really ever peak up to where it used to anymore. Labor, if you draw it all back and you really think hard about it and you’ve kind of traveled down that tunnel, you relate it all back to well what’s it costing? And it just costs so much more now and we need the labor force here. A lot more labor force here to help sustain what we’re doing.

Jiwan Brar:
That too and it’s not like any college kid or high school kid wants to be out on a farm digging in dirt, weeding, walking rows, pruning.

Dillon Honcoop:
Putting up wires.

Jiwan Brar:
Putting up wires.

Dillon Honcoop:
I always hated that.

Jiwan Brar:
Or if it’s hot out it’s too hot or if it’s cold out I feel like people want to be more inside working in kind of in a room and where it’s warm. Outside it’s mother nature, right? There is nowhere I get to turn the heat up or I get to turn the AC on, right? And there’s a tree at lunchtime that you want to sit under.

Paul Sangha:
Just the shade. The shade is what you go hunt.

Dillon Honcoop:
No, that’s very true.

Paul Sangha:
But again there’s if anybody that’s considering, I would say anyone that’s considering getting into farming what they should do first is go and work and really understand putting the wires up like you mentioned or any of the things. I’ve been on a harvester for 12 hours go experience that. And if you feel like there is going to be this refreshing feeling you get from doing that, and that’s what’s going to make you decide whether this is what you want to do or not. Every time I do it, there’s something refreshing about it. And now I get to watch it, I’ve got two daughters and I get to watch it on in them.

Paul Sangha:
They’re having fun like I used to. You can’t really see them up on the harvester of course but when they are up there, they’re loving life you know? And those are the things that I’m fearful that won’t stick around very long but I really hope they do. I’m happy that organizations like Save Family Farming, Whatcom Family Farmers are doing everything they can to make sure those stay. Those are big time, they mean a lot more.

Jiwan Brar:
They’re my nieces, right? So when I see them out in the farm it reminds me, I was like, “Oh, that was me. Right?” It’s like one day I’m going to have kids, and they’re going to be up on a harvest or like that too where you kind of look into the future a little bit and then you also think like, “Okay, wait a minute. Berry prices are coming down, right. Well what’s going to happen? Is farming going to be around or is it not?” You know what I mean? Like you start thinking and you never know what the future holds so you just take it 100% of time and see what happens.

Dillon Honcoop:
Thank you guys so much for opening up and just talking about life and farming and all this stuff that you guys put into it. I think it’s really cool to hear the real stories.

Paul Sangha:
Definitely. And thank you for having us and letting us kind of at least share our experiences a little bit.

Announcer:
This is the Real Food, Real People podcast. These are the stories of the people who grow your food.

Dillon Honcoop:
It was so much fun for me to get to know Jiwan and Paul a bit better since we’ve seen each other across the fence and passing on the road so many times, but hadn’t actually had the chance to sit down and really connect on a deeper personal level and that’s what we want to keep doing here on the Real Food, Real People podcast relink all of us around this region with the people behind our food. Thank you so much for coming along for the ride, for subscribing to the podcast on Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever your favorite outlet is for visiting our website at Real Food, Real People.org and for following us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It may not seem like a big thing, but it helps us a lot to continue the mission of Real Food, Real People when you connect with us in those ways. We’ll see you again here next week as our journey continues.

Announcer:
The Real Food, Real People podcast is sponsored in part by Save Family Farming, giving a voice to Washington’s farm families find them online@safefamilyfarming.org.