A record cotton crop
Zero profit
Jon Whatley leaves for work at 6:30 in the morning and gets home between 9:30 and 11:30 at night
He's a fourth-generation farmer on this land
His son Jack wants to be the fifth
In 2024, thirty-seven ships came to the port of Corpus Christi to pick up his grain
In 2025, zero
A record cotton crop
No profit
He thinks every day about what it would mean to be the last generation of his family to farm this ground
Texas Farm Credit could tell the story in a hearing room, in a policy paper, in a chart
None of those move a legislator the way a fourth-generation farmer standing in his own field will
So we made the film that put Jon Whatley in front of the people who write agricultural policy
A documentary short built to travel wherever the debate was happening
Within a week of release the film had 15,000 views
A Texas Farm Credit record
It played in Washington
It played on both sides of the aisle
Bipartisan support followed
Lending programs were protected
The next generation of farmers has a bank because lawmakers finally met one