'We grew up in agriculture--we've had a lot of experience of going without'
The Washington Post
00:20:05
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All Told
About this episode
This is the seventh episode in The Post’s coronavirus podcast series, which each week brings listeners inside a different person’s experience of the pandemic. Previous episodes have chronicled a week in the life of an emergency-room worker, an NBA player, a blues guitarist, a minister, a librarian and a city council member.
In this episode, we peer inside the life of Terry Swanson, a 71-year-old farmer and cattle rancher in Colorado. On his ranch, he raises calves until they’re ready to be sold to larger stockyards.
Many such independent ranchers had already been struggling before the pandemic, as the meat industry consolidated and drove down the prices it paid ranchers for their cattle. But with coronavirus outbreaks shuttering some major meat-processing plants and reducing production at others, ranchers such as Swanson are having even more trouble making ends meet.
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Previous episodes:
- 'Good luck, everybody''You never signed up for this’‘I cannot hold it all’'For me, it’s all the blues''First thing's first, I gotta beat this game'‘It is a pretty significant hole in the system’
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Explore more first-person accounts of the pandemic:
A multimedia oral history of the virus's impact