Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on the “Living Record: A Church News Documentary Series” on BYUtv called “Harvest of Faith.” Part 1 features welfare farms. Part 2 looks at welfare food processing and distribution facilities owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Part 3 focuses on AgReserves, the commercial arm of Farmland Reserve, an investment affiliate of the Church.
In 1936, during the Great Depression, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints created its welfare program to care for Church members in need and strengthen their abilities to become self-reliant.
Today, the Church’s welfare efforts assist people of all faiths, or no faith, around the world.
Bishop L. Todd Budge, first counselor in the Church’s Presiding Bishopric, said the welfare system of the Church is founded on principles of work, dignity, self-reliance and a desire to follow the two great commandments — love of God and love of neighbor.
“We always have surpluses, and those surpluses go to food pantries across the United States to serve all of God’s children,” Bishop Budge said.
The system includes orchards, vineyards, livestock operations and other types of agricultural operations. Crops include green beans, sweet corn, peaches, pears, apples, wheat, sugar beets, potatoes, grapes and peanuts.
Blaine Maxfield, managing director of the Church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance Services, said there are around two dozen welfare farms, most in the western United States.
“We have a very limited number of actual employees that work on the farms, and that’s for a specific reason. The reason is because we want to provide opportunities for those that serve,” Maxfield said.
Volunteers and service missionaries plant, grow and harvest the food. And in the process, they are coming closer to Jesus Christ.
“I believe that as equal to the food that we produce at our farms, it’s equally as important the lives that we’re changing,” Maxfield said. “That’s the law of the harvest, perhaps the real law of the harvest as it pertains to Welfare and Self-Reliance farms.”
There are challenges to relying on volunteer labor, Bishop Budge said. Sometimes people fulfill their assignments; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have the skill set, and sometimes they don’t. But it’s well worth it, he said.
“It’s less about productivity and more about the transformation of souls,” he said.
Below are examples through a year’s worth of experiences on some of the Church’s welfare farms.
Fall: Taylorview Crops Farm
On a fall harvest day at Taylorview Crops Farm in Idaho Falls, Idaho, workers started early in the morning with a prayer and training on what to do.
Soon, thousands of dusty potatoes were tumbling down a conveyor belt from one machine to another.
The manager, David Nielson, said 300 acres of potatoes roughly translate to about 10 million pounds of fresh potatoes per year that leave this welfare farm and are distributed to those in need.
“We package and ship a lot of our potatoes to community food banks,” he said.
On that day, there had been a miscommunication, and at the start of the shift there were no volunteers. After a few phone calls, 20 volunteers came from a neighboring stake to help with the harvest.
By the end of the shift, there was difficulty finding enough tasks for everyone who wanted to serve.
“I believe God still works miracles, and He works miracles through the volunteers that come to this farm,” Nielson said.
Three men who regularly serve at the farm are Church service missionaries and longtime friends Don Stevens, Roger Christensen and Lynn Jorgensen. Elder Stevens got the call from his stake president first and asked if two of his friends could also serve.
Now they all box potatoes the first three Wednesdays of every month year-round. And the harvest “is pretty much a week and a half of 12-hour days,” Elder Stevens said.
They are in their third year of service. Every time they get together, said Elder Christensen, “we take the job seriously — but not ourselves.”
Elder Jorgensen’s wife and daughter died a few months before he got the call to serve, and he admits he was not enthusiastic about it — he just wanted to sit at home.
“I think overall the Lord knew what I needed. It gave me a direction,” he said. “We’ve gone through some highs and lows. Don’s wife passed away as well. Roger’s child we didn’t know was going to survive an illness, and yet we all stand by each other.”
Said Elder Stevens: “Service has taught me to not think of myself. Even though I’m feeling really bad, I’ll come and I’ll do service, and I feel a little bit better. So service has really saved me and has allowed me to be a survivor.”
Elder Christensen said they know their work is following the Savior’s teachings to love one another.
Nielson expounded upon that: “If the Savior was here, He’d be growing potatoes for the people in need. Because He’s not here, we get to do that.”
Winter: Madera Raisin Welfare Vineyard
On a winter day in Madera, California, Jamie Hansen and Kenneth Moore worked to check the vines at the Madera Raisin Welfare Vineyard. Hansen is the farm manager and Moore the assistant manager.
The vineyard was planted in 1949, and the Church bought it in 1962, Hansen said. “It is 80 acres. We have produced in the past upwards of 400,000 pounds of raisins.”
The raisins go to both Church welfare and humanitarian efforts. Hansen said most years the farm has somewhere between 30,000 to 35,000 volunteer hours.
“Our farm is here to provide raisins, but more than any amount of grapes or raisins that are ever taken off this farm, this farm is to help us learn,” he said.
Hansen has known Moore since Moore was a boy — and saw him struggle as he grew up.
Moore left the Church and his family at age 17. “I spent 30 years in a world that is very contrary to this world that I live in now,” he said.
In December 2011, Moore’s 16-year-old son was murdered in Fresno, California.
“I was a wreck. Nothing mattered,” Moore said. He spiraled into drug abuse and then led law enforcement on a car chase that resulted in a crash, a long hospital stay and then prison time.
When he was released from prison, he asked his mom what to do. Her advice was to pray. He started attending church again and saw Hansen there. One thing led to another, and now he works at the vineyard.
On that winter day among the vines, Moore pointed out the parallels to his own life.
“Today, this place looks pretty lifeless. Starts with almost nothing, which is what this vineyard is right now. It’s almost nothing. But it grows into something magnificent,” he said. “When I came home last year, I came home with absolutely nothing. The farm has healed me physically and been a big part of my healing emotionally.”
Bishop Budge said many times, when people are at their lowest in life or when things are not going well, they feel a sense of hopelessness. “But when they go out and they get their hands in the dirt and they’re working alongside other people, it changes them.”
Moore said, “I live my life every day, every day to make my son proud of me on the other side of the veil.”
Spring: North Ogden Peach Orchard
On an April day, rows upon rows of peach trees were covered in tiny pink blossoms at the North Ogden Peach Orchard in Pleasant View, Utah.
Volunteers from local stakes and young service missionaries were there to prune and thin the trees as needed.
Bruce Liston, the farm’s manager, said peaches picked on this welfare farm go to the cannery in Boise, Idaho, and then are shipped to food banks throughout the U.S. to feed anyone in need.
Spring is a critical time for every fruit farmer. This is when the trees start to bloom, but the blossoms are highly vulnerable to frost. Bad weather can kill or limit the potential crop, Liston said.
One year, the temperature dropped and snow fell over all the trees. Liston rode through the orchard on a tractor to see if he could blow the snow off trees before it froze.
“But I was too late,” he remembered. “I went and looked throughout the whole orchard. The bloom was encased in ice. It was a sure kill. I thought, ‘I have lost this crop this year,’ and it just hurts you deep inside.”
He had to wait until it thawed and the bloom was over to see if there would be a crop that year.
“The orchard started getting stronger and healthier, fuller. And the whole tree had to be thinned. There was so much fruit on that tree. It was not just a small harvest, it was a full, full harvest. I couldn’t believe it.”
He knows it was from the Lord’s help that year — and he said he sees the hand of the Lord on almost a daily basis at the orchard.
“I see the bloom happen, and I see that people change, and you know the Lord must look at us that way. We start off as a little bloom, and hopefully, we graduate as ripe fruit.”
Maxfield said the Church welfare farms have the same challenges any farm would have. There are things the farmers can’t control, like the weather or commodity prices or labor issues.
“The law of the harvest that we see not only as food that comes from the farms that we have, but it’s the way that we change people as they focus on caring for those in need,” Maxfield said.
Summer: Layton Green Beans and Corn Farm
Vegetables grow throughout 1,200 acres at the Church’s Layton Green Beans and Corn Farm in Layton, Utah. Summer is a time of green as far as the eye can see.
Glenn Ross is a volunteer at the farm.
“This year, I think we produced 1.24 million cans of beans, and I think they’re going to exceed 2 million cans of corn,” he said.
The farm has a lot of volunteer labor — and not just members of the Church. Many from the community ask if they can help. Ross said he has seen up to 500 people weeding up to three and four fields at a time.
“You have men, women and children, and they’re out there laughing and having fun,” he said. “I have seen them shoveling ditches at 100 degrees [Farenheit], and I say to myself: ‘Why are they doing that?’ I think people do that because they know where it goes. It teaches them an aspect of service you usually don’t get.”
Through this work, Ross said, he knows the Lord takes care of people. People need the corn and the beans — they are waiting for it and praying for it.
Maxfield said the Church could purchase things — and it often does — but welfare farms show the principle of self-reliance.
And Bishop Budge said service is the way to express love for God and one’s neighbor.
“These spiritual principles become very tangible when you are working in the welfare farm,” he said. “There’s an element of sacrifice and a love in the offering, and people feel that — it comes through.”
Fall: Pearsall Peanut Farm in Pearsall, Texas
Mike Hurst, the manager of Pearsall Peanut Farm in Pearsall, Texas, has an old-school trick for checking the moisture on peanuts.
He opens the shell and then presses the peanut against something to see if it will stick. On a fall day, out in the fields, he was checking by pressing shelled peanuts against a bar on his tractor.
“If they stick, they’re pretty moist. If they fall apart, they’re dry,” Hurst said. They looked dry enough that day, but he also checked the moisture the “real way” by taking a sample into town, where the peanuts were shelled and then put through a grain moisture machine or meter to get a reading.
The reading came back with the perfect dryness level — the peanuts were ready to be thrashed.
“The peanuts that we grow get sold to market right away,” Hurst said. “The sales of those peanuts offset the cost to buy peanuts for the welfare canning factory, who grind them and turn them into peanut butter.”
Around 500 acres are growing peanuts, and other acres are leased out as the farm does crop rotation and good soil practices. The farm typically produces 1.5 million or 1.6 million pounds of peanuts every year.
Hurst said the way the welfare farms are managed is different than the way a corporation is managed.
“Our budgets come from sacred funds, so we’re concerned about that, but that’s not what we talk about. It’s not the corporate conversations where it’s all bottom line, and what can we do to increase sales, and how can we cut costs? We talk about people. We are doing everything we can to help alleviate people that are hungry,” he said.
Managing all these acres is a job, but it almost feels like Hurst is on a mission, he said, and the best job he could ever think of. “I truly believe that the welfare farm system is operating as the Savior would have it operate.”
Maxfield said everything done in this program is to bless others.
“That person that’s in need that’s receiving the peanut butter or the peaches or the corn, in some small way in their time of need, recognizes that heaven sees them, that their Heavenly Father is aware of them.”
Bishop Budge said the purpose of the welfare farms is to bring people to Jesus Christ. And that can be done only by living the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“These are not just farms to make a profit, or to produce food; they are farms that change people’s lives.”
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