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>> Hi, I'm Terry Detrick.
As a long-time supporter and past Chair of the Oklahoma Agriculture Mediation Program,
I want to thank you for your time and hope
that this DVD gives you enough information about mediation.
[Background music] In the mid to late 1980s, I, along with many other farmers and ranchers,
was caught in that devastating agriculture economic downturn.
I was paying rent on every square foot of ground that I farmed.
And like my neighbors, I had borrowed lots of operating money,
and the variable interest rates went to 21%.
I know the impossibility of trying
to make a living while paying my banker one-fifth and my landlords one-third.
Farmers are at the mercy of markets, weather and many other factors.
We have no one to pass the cost on to.
I know how sacred the family farm is to the family operator and the trauma that comes
with the possibility of losing it.
We are one with our land.
It saddens me to realize that many of our agriculture producers who provide such abundance
of food, fiber and fuel for this country have trouble feeding their own families.
Consequently, I was anxious to have the opportunity to get involved at the beginning
of the Oklahoma Agriculture Mediation Program on behalf of family farmers and ranchers.
You may have a lot of questions about what mediation is and how you can use it.
And I hope the stories told here will tell you what you need to know.
>> I really care about agriculture, and I care about our people, this land,
and I love this country, and I don't want anyone or another farmer to ever go
through the learning experience that we went through.
I think there's a lot of out there -- a lot of people out there today that got hurt real bad
and maybe didn't make it through or didn't get across what they wanted and lost
and lost a whole legacy, a whole farm, a whole --
and usually it took marriage, it took everything when it went.
And I seen so many of these.
And I just can't say enough.
I just don't want to see anyone ever go through that again.
We were all farmers, born and raised a farmer, and that's all I ever known and loved.
And like every German, they had too many children, so some us had to move out.
So I come down here in 1973 with a dream.
[Background music] We got into the peanut raising and cattle
and vegetables and things like this.
Agriculture was good to us, and in 1979 was probably one of our best years we ever had.
In 1980, it started with a very bad drought.
And this is kind of -- was the beginning of it.
I was, at that time, borrowing money from Farm and Home,
we had borrowed money to operate and so forth.
And they were seeing a problem.
They, they kind of tightened up and raised interest somewhat and different things
like this, and all the while, we were having some bad years.
And it come into the thing of, "Well, okay, Jim, if you just sign everything
over to us, we'll forgive your debt."
And I said, "Now, wait a minute, I have everything that I've worked
for in my life this far, to this point.
Isn't there some way we can deal with it?"
I went to even -- Farm and Home, to different creditors, and I said, "Listen, I can't pay you
but this much, or we won't have it until then."
We're going to pay our debts, and we're going to succeed, and we're going to make it.
And we did.
We proved we could do that.
And with the help of different ones that through mediation that we could talk about this,
and it gave us a middle of the road where we could sacrifice to give up this or that to stay.
And I think today too many people are too scared of this, and don't be scared of it.
It is not the end of the Earth.
You can pull it to the together and keep it and go on.
My first real convincing that I needed to take it to mediation come from a state planner
that came down from Farm and Home Administration, and he said, "Jim,
you need to ask for mediation," and I said, "What will mediation do?
You know, what's mediation going to do for me."
He said, "It gives us all a chance to talk about it," and I said, "Well,
we've done talked about it, we've hashed it over."
He said, "Wait a minute," he said, "We put it upon ears that haven't heard it."
Today with what we know of mediation, it can be done in one sit down.
When it come right down to it, we had some terrific people to work with.
I had a lot of moral support, and it took the scariness out of it.
I had so many farmers over that time that I would go to them and say,
"Listen, you just need to be patient.
You need to do so and so."
"Oh, no, I'm not going to make it."
I said, "Yes, you will if you don't give up and don't quit looking up.
It will happen.
And it will happen, and it did happen and we're proof of that."
>> What caused it was the fact that I had a bad year due to drought
and certain circumstances couldn't make my payments.
So the first thing I did was start looking at the internet.
I went to agriculture lawyers first.
I went down the list, then I started looking
at agriculture rights, you know, what rights do I have?
What do I -- what am I allowed to do?
So -- and then I started all these visions like, "Well, what's this lawyer going to cost me?
Is it going to be worth it to try to keep my place?"
You know, and you know that was -- you know, very few of them were free.
So I'm sure some of them were free, but they probably weren't going to help you much.
You know, and the mediation deal, I mean, they don't -- it's not about money.
They just -- I don't know where the money comes from, but they just do what they need to do.
So a lawyer would've, no matter what, would've charged you.
So I could've seen that it would've been a mess.
Until the day I got there, I was still, you know, wondering how it's going to go.
And then they made me really feel comfortable because, like I said, I had a neutral partner.
Because it was just me.
I didn't have -- you know at the time when I went in for that, I didn't have no banker,
no accountant or anybody or lawyer.
I went in there, and I was like, "What is this going to be like."
So we all sat down just around the table, just sat there.
He -- they sat over there, and I sat over here, and I started think, you know,
"This is like a courtroom," you know,
and it was pretty neat how we -- and then we just took turns.
You know, "What is your situation?"
They looked at me first, and they said, "Is that all you have to say?"
And I said, "Well, I just want to farm.
I just want to get my loans, and I want to try to make it."
And they looked over at him, they said, "Well, what do you guys want?"
They said, "We want him to meet the paperwork and the requirements,
and we will give him a chance to redo what he didn't get done," which was great with them.
I'm not sure that would've happened if they wouldn't have had somebody there in the middle
to see -- to show them that I was not trying to do anything wrong, I just made a mistake.
If you got a situation like this, you know, know that you got a chance because you --
if you keep your cool and do right, you know, mediating it out, it's going to work.
It may not be exactly like you want, but, you know, somebody's got to give both ways.
And that's what we did.
We did. The mediators allowed us to give both ways.
It made me go ahead and do my paperwork and get it right,
and the mediators made FSA give a little bit, pass the rules.
"Okay, he went past the deadline.
You're going to give him a chance" -- it's kind of like, "You're going to give him a chance.
You're going to stick to it."
And you know, that's how they come about, and it worked great.
And I have applied since with them another loan due to drought.
I mean, I've had to do it again, but I was on time.
And because -- I would say because we was able to mediate that out before,
when he saw me this time, he knew, "Oh, here's Gene again,"
and I was not doing the same mistakes before.
So to this day, I'm, you know, back on track and redone my loans, and I'm still there.
If you think of any situation where you've got two people
with an impasse, well, how does that get solved?
You've got to have a mediator in the middle.