I am an expert gardener. Here’s how I’m fighting the Tractor Supply anti-DEI stance

In just a few months, many companies have retracted their stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that they previously said they strongly supported.

In June, agricultural retailer Tractor Supply announced that the company would eliminate DEI positions and end its carbon emissions reduction targets, making the decision in response to customer concerns. John Deere made a similar argument not long ago, when the company decided to reduce its diversity policies. Other retailers, such as Lowe’s, have followed suit.

It’s not news that business commitment to DEI has wavered since 2020, and especially in the past year, as conservative activists have targeted DEI’s corporate values ​​after the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action. But companies like Tractor Supply and John Deere seem to have gone a step further than many other companies, targeting labor service groups and pulling sponsorships from Pride events—even in an industry that has long been seen as a white male ideology. Both companies also said these decisions were driven by criticism from their customer community.

That’s why intrepid farmers like Maggie Cheney, director and founder at Rock Steady Farm, are fighting back. After Tractor Supply’s announcement, Rock Steady Farm—located in the rural Hudson Valley of New York—launched a campaign and petition to draw attention to the company’s actions and try to mobilize support for a boycott of its products. (Tractor Supply did not respond to a request for comment.)

Cheney spoke to him Fast company about how organizations like Rock Steady Farm are trying to change the landscape of farming in the US and bring more unknown and variable workers into the fold, and what their community is doing to put pressure on companies like Tractor Supply. This discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

“We’re trying to change the narrative about who farms and what they look like”

I have worked for 20 years in farming in different areas. My father is also a vegetable farmer, and I grew up helping in the fields. … I have farmed in California and done educational and training programs for adults and schools about farming and growing food. And now I do that for small and large scale farmers in rural areas.

In the Northeast, our season is March through November, so I work year-round full-time, and the winter is filled with administrative duties. [work]. But every day, I try to do four hours of morning harvesting or tractor work. Some days I can’t because I have a lot of admin to do, but other days, I spend the whole day farming. It just depends on the week and what the priorities are. …

We create programs that enable us to share agricultural knowledge and skills [with] small and medium-sized farmers in a predominantly recreational and rural environment. I also do a bit of consulting with novice gardeners. Finally the reality, [we’re] organizing a regional network of farmers working together on transportation and finding ways Rock Steady can bring food to beginning farmers to take that burden off.

And then there’s the story-changing side of what we do—the storytelling and visuals of adventurous and dynamic farmers. That’s why we came out clearly. We’re trying to change the narrative about who farms and what they look like. We are lucky that we can be outside, and not many farms do, so we use that privilege as much as we can.

We are trying to bring inspiration to different areas to develop other projects and to connect our struggles with others, regarding relations with Palestine, or bringing racial issues to the fore. Maybe there are LGBTQ people who are white and less racially literate. Or maybe there are people who love us because of how good our food tastes but don’t know much about the history of the Farm Bill or agricultural policies.

A growing part of our work is direct policy change and advocacy work and targeted campaigns. We have also done things that affect land access [and] affordable housing—some of the barriers created by small and transient farmers. If they come from the countryside, maybe they don’t have land as an inheritance, or maybe they’ve been kicked out of their family. … Then something came up that said: “Okay, this affects us directly. This is our life. We can’t keep quiet about it.”

“I have been shopping at Tractor Supply for the past 10 years”

There was one way Tractor Supply put things together: “Our community wants this.” I have been shopping at Tractor Supply for the past 10 years, as have many of our partners and many other black-owned farms in the area. That is simply a false statement.

I feel like there’s a lot of misinformation and this kind of pressure about what rural America is, and what the red states are—that everybody’s Republican and everybody’s white and everybody’s a Trump supporter. And of course, it distorts that way in many communities and rural areas. But not all. Also, there are queer and trans and Black and brown people who might be Trump supporters, but we’re still here. It’s just a sleepy, unchanging approach to what is a complex rural society.

Many queer and trans and BIPOC farmers also want to be in the countryside. There is a big pull from the cities to give back to the rural areas. That drive and power is very clear to me that we see him working in our programs. There is a desire for people to go and do country and agricultural work, and I think if they see that narrative outside, they won’t feel welcome. There are communities outside the cities. Part of the challenge we’ve had in the desert and the past is that we feel compelled to go to the cities because that’s where most of us are, and that’s where the health centers and community centers are that meet our needs. It takes a lot of effort to counter that narrative.

“You can feel the world that could be”

At this point we have LGBTQ rights nationally where there are both these huge advances in our rights, and these huge removals or suppression or taking away of our rights. You can feel a world of potential, while it feels like it’s being taken away from you at the same time. It’s a horrible feeling, to feel like you’re being wiped out. And I can’t imagine what [it’s like for] the people in them [Tractor Supply] fancy and thrift stores, or Black and brown stores—that feel they are being erased from their jobs.

For many queer and trans people, especially a certain generation, we have experienced discrimination in the workplace many times and we don’t want that to continue. Seeing happens in another place of work, although it is not yours, and it is clear and obvious. And you’re like, “Oh, that would be a snowball effect. Are they trying to encourage other companies to do the same?”

The kind of activities a place like Tractor Supply does in a rural area [area] in fact it has a great impact on the local community. There are not that many businesses in these small towns. That sets certain standards in place, and those actions play into larger issues: Who provides health care? What is the salary that can be earned? How do people pay for houses?

In agriculture, we always think about the rights of farm workers, and more recently the rights of immigrants. If there are language barriers. [Workers’] rights to access water crossings and shade. These are really the basics. There has been a lot of momentum around Black Lives Matter to start more [DEI] programs, and I think there’s a reason why those were needed. Those problems have not gone away.

“It’s about changing people’s minds and opinions”

We created an online campaign and got 1,000 signatures in just one push we did a few weeks ago. We’ve been around for a while [that] close to partner organizations, both nationally [level] and just in the Northeast. The requirements of the petition depend on the refusal to buy [at Tractor Supply] and, asking the CEO to step down, and get all of the climate and DEI policies [reinstated]. Our goal is to get as many signatures, ideally up to 5,000, so that we can directly contact the CEO and the board and say: “We are your community. We are your customers.”

If we can get this to 5,000 and that can make a stamp, great. We have little control over that. In the end it will be up to those people [at Tractor Supply]. But it’s not just about that. It is about changing people’s mindsets and perceptions about who lives in rural communities. If only we could find that [message] except where more, that would be an advantage. And there are links to many different stories currently overlapping. Tractor Supply brought climate change. We have these broad statements being made about rural communities in an election year. There are states that add more anti-trans laws. So there is a much bigger picture that we know, and this is one piece of it.

“There are many farms that have taken the place of naughty and fickle people”

There is no doubt that there are pockets where there is an increase in opposition to the changes taking place in rural communities and certain regions. But at the same time you have these places where I have seen a big difference in the last 10 years, in terms of how many farmers have gone out. People do planning work too [raising] visibility, and more and more people flocked to those places. There are many farms that have taken over the land of the giants and the changelings. And across the country, more resources and federal and state dollars are shifting to these projects. For a long time it felt like an untouchable little thing—that the USDA would only support big commodity crop farms and lobbyists. But I think there is a shift in the right direction.