While suburban consultants call in sick with mild lower-back aches from ergonomic office chairs, Iowa corn growers lose arms to steel PTO shafts on 200-horsepower tractors.

Agricultural labor is unforgiving. In fact, farming is more dangerous than working as a police officer or firefighter, with 23 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

I am the son of a farmer. I know firsthand what backbreaking labor actually costs and how brutally the modern system devalues it.

Bitter harvest

Heavy steel farm implements chop, grind, and crush human tissue without delay. Spinning driveshafts running at 1,000 revolutions per minute yank loose shirttails into gearboxes within milliseconds. Grain bin entrapments swallow dozens of operators every harvest season, suffocating men under 50,000 pounds of shelled corn in 20 seconds flat.

Even so, today some of the greatest dangers facing American farmers aren’t found in the fields. They’re found on the balance sheet.

U.S. Department of Agriculture reports project total farm debt to hit $624.7 billion very soon. A brand-new John Deere combine can cost as much as $1 million on the lot, while the increasing computerization of farm equipment has produced a years-long battle over whether farmers can repair machines they ostensibly own. In July, the Federal Trade Commission and five states reached a settlement with Deere & Company requiring it to give farmers and independent repair shops access to software and other repair tools previously available only to authorized dealers.

That is a rare piece of good news. American Farm Bureau Federation records show that Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose by 46% last year, with more than 315 cases filed in federal court. Farm families sign multimillion-dollar operating notes every spring, gambling their ancestral property on diesel prices and unpredictable rainfall.

For too many farmers, crushing debt becomes a death sentence. Centers for Disease Control data shows farmers take their own lives at a rate 3.5 times higher than the national workforce average. The official body count stands at 43.2 suicides per 100,000 farm workers. Behind every statistic is a family who loses a husband, father, brother, or son.

RELATED: The day my father handed me the gun

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Extreme isolation

A grower drags himself out of bed at four in the morning to pull 16-hour shifts in 100-degree heat. He provides endless tons of cheap grain for coastal grocery chains. His personal paycheck yields negative operating margins and endless bank interest notices.

Extreme isolation magnifies the misery, leaving men alone for hours on end, with overdue land mortgages and loaded shotguns. Rural mental health services remain nonexistent, forcing decent, hardworking Americans to fight crippling depression with manual labor until their bodies give out.

America lost 15,000 individual farm operations in 2025, an average of 41 every single day. Thomas Jefferson championed a nation of independent yeoman farmers owning land free of debt. Wall Street hedge funds buy up those foreclosed family tracts on county courthouse steps today.

The USDA found that the only sales category in which the number of farms actually increased was farms with annual sales of $1 million or more. Half of all American farmland is now operated by farms with sales of at least $500,000.

Global fertilizer empires and multinational grain trusts operating from high-rise office buildings accelerate this destruction. Commercial nitrogen fertilizer costs continue to surge, making every harvest more expensive and turning the simple act of breaking even into a Sisyphean struggle.

Future foreclosed

Who would willingly sign up for such a life today? The numbers reveal a troubling answer.

The average American farm owner is 58 years of age. Farm kids watch their fathers spend a lifetime battling debt and despair only to see little reward at the end. Many understandably walk away from the family business. America is running out of farmers, and the consequences will reach every dinner table in the country.

I’m not an American citizen, but I am the son of a farmer. I know firsthand what backbreaking labor actually costs and how brutally the modern system devalues it. When you grow up on a farm, you learn early that livestock don’t take holidays. The crops don’t wait for good weather, and equipment breaks precisely when you need it most.

It is an existence defined by physical risk and absolute exhaustion. The work is thankless, and the farmer lives a largely invisible existence. He is ignored by many and mocked by those who have never done a day of physical work in their lives.

To ignore or mock the farmer is to undermine the very foundation of self-reliance. A country that destroys its independent producers surrenders its national independence to foreign supply chains and corporate conglomerates. Conservative ideals depend on preserving private property rights and local community ownership.

And American food security depends on those who begin work at sunrise and end long after it has set. Saving the American farmer requires restoring basic economic sanity to rural property rights. Urgent action is needed before the damage becomes irreversible.

​Farming, Lifestyle 

When Catherine Herring found out she was pregnant with her third child, her husband began behaving in strange ways — including obsessing over her hydration.

After an emergency left her and her unborn child on death’s doorstep, Catherine hired a private investigator to look into her husband. What she discovered led to their divorce and his arrest.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sits down to hear Catherine’s harrowing story.

In 2022, Catherine found out she was pregnant a week after she and her husband decided to separate. The news resulted in him choosing to stick around, but his behavior was markedly changed.

“[One] morning, he brought me a plastic cup of water and a biscuit and said that he had noticed I wasn’t drinking enough water, and for the sake of my pregnancy, he wanted me to stay hydrated, and then he added that he was not going to leave until I had finished the entire glass of water,” Catherine recalls.

“As time progressed and I drank more of the water and ate more of the biscuit, he started urging me to drink faster, and he ultimately was standing over me urging me to chug the water. And when he did that, that was the first time I actually looked down into the cup, and I realized that the water was not clear. It was kind of creamy, almost milky,” she adds.

When she questioned him about the drink, he shrugged it off and acted like he had mistakenly used a dirty cup. But when “violent cramping” and complete loss of bodily control began 30 minutes later, Catherine knew something was terribly wrong.

“Something had been in that cup,” she tells Allie.

Amid the chaos, Catherine recalled an article she had recently read about Google blocking a pro-life group’s advertisement for abortion pill reversals.

“I thought about that article, and I ended up googling abortion pill reversals, and a pregnancy hotline number came up … and I said, ‘This is going to be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard, but I think my husband put something in my drink this morning,’” Catherine recounts.

“[The nurse] frantically was trying to get me a prescription for progesterone, which I always find so ironic now. You don’t have to have a prescription to obtain chemical abortion pills at this moment in the United States of America, but you do need a prescription for progesterone to counteract the abortion pills to do the reversal,” she explains.

Miraculously, Catherine already had progesterone pills from a previous pregnancy and was able to get a dosage in her system shortly after drinking the water her husband brought her.

But her symptoms didn’t stop.

“I kept getting sick throughout the day, and then I started bleeding heavily, and I was still in touch with the hotline nurse, and she urged me to go to the emergency room,” says Catherine.

When she got to the ER, a “solid black” urine sample alerted doctors and nurses that her kidneys were failing.

“They started an IV, started me on antibiotics, and then they also conducted an ultrasound, and that was the first time that I saw my daughter’s heartbeat,” Catherine recalls.

But because hospitals “cannot test for prescription drug poisonings,” Catherine couldn’t get a clear answer about what her husband had put in her water that morning, so she partnered with a private investigator, who instructed her to go back home and “pretend” to take the drinks her husband gave her in order to collect evidence.

In the end, they discovered he attempted to poison her and the baby “six more times.”

“We ended up finding two sets of abortion pill packaging in my trash, and one of the poisoning attempts he did in front of two eyewitnesses. And then the seventh and final drink, we caught him making it on a hidden camera that we had placed into my kitchen air vents,” says Catherine.

“It was so terrifying because he was still to my face saying that he loved me, that he cared about me, that we were going to work this out,” she adds.

Forty days after the first of seven total poisoning attempts, Catherine finally had enough evidence to go to the police. A month later, her husband was arrested and charged with felony assault to induce abortion, felony assault of a pregnant person, and then felony assault injury to a child.

“Ultimately he took a plea deal,” says Catherine. “The felony assault to induce abortion was dropped, and his plea deal was for 180 days in jail plus probation for the attempted murder of our daughter seven separate times.”

“I think these plea deals and weak sentences, they only embolden abusers, and so it’s been really scary,” she says, calling his sentence “a slap on the wrist.”

In the divorce proceedings, it came out that Catherine’s husband had long been “living a double life,” including engaging in an extramarital affair. Today, he is serving an eight-year prison sentence after repeatedly violating a protective order that barred him from contacting her.

But life is looking up for Catherine and her children — including her youngest daughter, Josephine Grace. Despite being born prematurely with multiple developmental issues, Josephine is thriving today.

“If she walked in the room, you would have no idea that she had overcome so much in four short years. She is a true inspiration, and I’m so grateful to be her mom,” says Catherine.

To hear more of Catherine’s story and the advocacy she’s doing today around domestic violence and the weaponization of abortion pills, check out the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abortion, Abortion pill, Allie beth stuckey, Domestic violence, Blazetv show 

A stretch of roadway near the South Chicago Chapel on East 95th Street was shut down as investigators continued to process the dozens of bodies found improperly stored at the funeral home.

Multiple law enforcement sources told WGN-TV that at least 50 decomposing bodies were found on Thursday stuffed into closets and the garage at the business in Chicago, Illinois.

She was cited for leaving bodies in an unrefrigerated area that had a ‘rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation.’

The Chicago Police Department said the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation called officers to the business on a “license investigation.”

WLS-TV reported that the owner of the funeral home was recorded as Clark Morgan, whose name matches that of the person who ran Chicago Heights crematory. That business was shut down after more than 100 bodies were found improperly stored on trailers last year.

Morgan’s wife, Johanna, was listed as the funeral director at South Chicago Chapel, but her license was suspended on Wednesday after a history of disciplinary action.

In one incident, she was cited for leaving bodies in an unrefrigerated area that had a “rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation.”

Residents near the funeral home said they smelled a very foul odor for about a year.

“Every time I come through here, I smell a foul smell in the air, and I was wondering what that smell was, and I kept thinking maybe it was the sewer,” Frank Dower said. “That is so awful, but I hope they get it resolved. I hope they get it resolved and put the bodies away properly like they’re supposed to be, and justice for the families.”

“Oh man, it’s awful,” Valkiery Velez said. “I’ve lived here for about a year, and I could smell it this entire year. It’s like dead rodents, dead animals. You can smell it, yeah.”

Officials said that forensic pathologists found bodies in different states of decomposition.

RELATED: Florida man found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wound after being accused of sexually abusing corpse at funeral home

The families of the people at the funeral home have been left in limbo as the investigation continues.

“We don’t know if Melody is in there or not,” Patrice Halliburton said, referring to her sister, who had been cremated at the funeral home. “So right now, we’re more fearful that she is than we are angry.”

Local Alderman Peter Chico released a statement about the incident Friday.

“I was horrified when I found out about the bodies at the South Chicago Chapel Funeral Home,” he said. “My thoughts and prayers go out to the families who may have had loved ones there.”

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​Decomposing bodies, Chicago, Illinois, Abuse of corpse, Crime 

President Donald Trump lit into the far-left victor of the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Michigan after the highly anticipated contest.

Abdul El-Sayed, 41, was able to defeat establishment candidate Haley Stevens despite polling showing that she had the advantage over the Republican candidate.

‘He doesn’t love Israel; he doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart.’

“The polls were wrong again last night when they thought it would be a landslide victory for a hater of Jews and a hater of Israel,” the president said during an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“This guy hates Jews,” he continued. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s a little strong.’ No, he hates Jews, and hates Israel.”

“Abdul El-Sayed, can you believe this? This could only happen to me. Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman. He’s a man of hate, and now he’s going around saying, ‘Oh, I love everybody.’ He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, and you’re going to find out what he loves!” Trump said.

El-Sayed has been criticized widely for his far-left progressive values, and his narrow victory is seen as another defeat for the establishment wing of the party trying to keep control away from the extremist fringe.

“He doesn’t love Israel; he doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart, and there’s not a frickin’ thing he can do about it,” the president continued.

“When I watch Abdul, he’s full of s**t!” he added to laughter and applause.

El-Sayed will face 63-year-old Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination.

RELATED: Far-left Democrat promised driver’s licenses for illegal aliens in video unearthed from his past

Speaking to his supporters on Wednesday, El-Sayed invoked his Muslim religion when asked how he would beat Rogers.

“I want you to remind them that if we come through this, when we come through this — inshallah — that we’ll have taken $70 million on the chin and kept fighting back,” he said.

Inshallah means “God willing” in Arabic.

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​President donald trump, Abdul el-sayed, Us senate, Michigan, Democratic primary, Muslim, Islam, Politics