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.