Farming is Tough but Offers Important Lessons

Jul 11, 2024

By Marie Morris

I’ve noticed a lot of changes in our society lately. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s just the heat making me grumpy, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between those of us who farm and those who don’t.

Life is all about choices, and for us, farming is a passion that becomes a part of us. It’s a privilege to choose this lifestyle, but it also comes with its own set of challenges.

Not too long ago, most families farmed or at least grew their own food. Air conditioning and running water were luxuries that many households didn’t have. We live lives of luxury now — even many of us farmers — but at what cost?

The other night, I was coaching my daughter’s softball game in 89-degree heat. As I swatted bugs and felt sweat rolling down my back, I couldn’t help but think, “I could be doing hay right now.” Farming in the heat is tough, but it’s something we get used to. Watching my 6-year-old daughter hustle across the field to tag a girl at third base despite the heat reminded me of the importance of resilience. She turned to me and said, “Momma, it’s hot,” then went right back to playing ball. In contrast, another girl on the team was struggling with the heat, and her mother laughed it off, saying, “She can not function in any type of heat!”

This made me realize that while the long days and short nights of farming can be tough, they teach valuable lessons. My kids are with us doing chores, working with us, or playing outside during all the extreme temperatures so for them, enduring these hot temperatures is much easier.

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”