“You don’t have to be on one end of the spectrum or the other. It’s okay to find the middle ground.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a conversation with Ali Lightfoot of Lightfoot Farmstead in Tennessee. Ali is a high school math teacher, first-generation farmer, mother, educator, and co-owner of a growing direct-to-consumer farm business alongside her husband, Wesley.
What started as a simple desire to feed their own family has steadily grown into a thriving operation producing beef, pork, chicken, eggs, jams, jellies, and more — all while balancing full-time jobs, raising children, and building a business largely during evenings and weekends.
But what makes their story especially unique isn’t just the scale they’ve achieved. It’s how they’ve done it: through consistency, creativity, education, and a willingness to meet customers where they are.
And yes — through a bright blue converted school bus turned mobile farm store.
“We have to evolve to keep what we have.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a conversation with Hannah and Ashley Rainville, two sisters from a multi-generational dairy farm in northern Vermont who are walking through one of the hardest transitions a farm family can face.
Their story doesn’t begin with a plan to leave dairy. It begins with pressure—slow at first, then all at once. Rising costs, stagnant milk prices, aging equipment, and a system that no longer supports the kind of farm they were raised on eventually forced a question they couldn’t ignore anymore: what does the future actually look like from here?
“Convenience replaced skill, and we stopped noticing what we lost.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a conversation with Kody Hanner, founder of The Homestead Education and a lifelong advocate for reconnecting families with food, health, and practical life skills.
Kody’s story didn’t begin with a business plan or a content strategy. It began with a crisis.
“Policies built for emergencies rarely stay temporary.”
This solo episode of Farming on Purpose continues the conversation about resource allocation in agriculture, but shifts the lens toward something deeper. Instead of only asking how farmers allocate resources today, this episode asks a more foundational question: who shaped the choices we have available in the first place?
American agriculture didn’t arrive at its current structure by accident. Over the last century, it has been shaped by crises, policy decisions, infrastructure investments, and attempts to protect producers from catastrophic risk. Many of those decisions were made during moments of genuine emergency — moments when the stability of the entire food system felt uncertain.
This episode explores how policies designed to stabilize agriculture during the Great Depression gradually became the framework that guides modern agricultural production. It also examines how those policies influenced which crops dominate the landscape, how infrastructure developed across rural America, and why certain production decisions now feel almost inevitable.
Understanding that history helps reveal an important tension in agriculture today: the balance between stability and flexibility.
“People really want the agricultural life. They want to learn how to do it right—they just need someone willing to show them.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a conversation with Frank Baggiolini, asset manager and content creator for Outlaw Ranch Care, a company dedicated to helping new rural landowners learn how to manage their property, livestock, and equipment.
“Farmers markets are great — but they’re a narrow pipe between farmers and consumers.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a conversation with Dan Brunner, founder of Market Wagon, a platform designed to reconnect consumers with local food by solving one of agriculture’s most overlooked problems: distribution.
For decades, Dan had been fascinated by the way groceries move through the American food system. As someone with a background in software and logistics, he understood that the system wasn’t broken because farmers didn’t want to sell locally or because consumers didn’t want to buy local food. The challenge was the gap between them.
“Every generation of farmers has asked the same question: What do we do with what we have?”
This solo episode of Farming on Purpose steps back from interviews and into history — not for nostalgia, but for perspective. Agriculture has never stood still. It has been shaped by expansion, collapse, innovation, and transition. And yet through every era, the core challenge has remained the same: how do we allocate our resources wisely enough to survive — and hopefully, to build something that lasts?
This episode explores the major eras that shaped American agriculture and what they reveal about the decisions we’re facing today — especially as the largest generational land transfer in U.S. history unfolds.
“You don’t know what you don’t know — and that’s what keeps people up at night.”
This episode of Farming on Purpose features a candid, direct conversation with Jace Young, founder and CEO of Legacy Farmer. What began as a childhood inside a multi-million-dollar Kansas family farm ultimately became a front-row seat to financial collapse — and later, a mission to help producers avoid the same outcome.
Jace’s story is rooted in generational agriculture, hard lessons in pride and leadership, and a conviction that understanding your numbers isn’t optional — it’s foundational. This conversation moves beyond accounting and into something deeper: responsibility, structure, transition, and the kind of leadership that allows a farm to outlast the person running it.
