A video is going viral this week showing a Minnesota dairy farmer break down in tears as he reveals just how bad the financial pressures in his industry have gotten.
Mark Berg, 26, took to Facebook last Monday to post a six minute-long video in which he revealed that he had just had an argument with his family over how they can save their 200 cow dairy farm in Pine Island.
“Literally just got done arguing with my dad. Just arguing, screaming back and forth. And it never used to be that way, you know, it never did,” Berg said. “And it’s not our fault. It isn’t our fault. It isn’t fair.”
The young farmer cried as he recounted his father telling him that he now had less money than he did when he started the farm forty years ago. Last year, the median income for a dairy farm in Minnesota plummeted from $43,000 to less than $15,000, and one in ten of the dairy farms in the state closed down.
Berg said that his family has had to take loans out just to pay their bills, and they are going to sell some of their cattle because they can no longer afford to feed them.
“We’re not asking to make a million,” he said. “But when you literally work day in day out, all the time, for nothing? We’ve gained nothing.”
Berg added that things have gotten so bad that he knows farmers who have committed suicide.
“To the Dairy Community, I know you are hurting, hang in there if you can,” he posted alongside the video, which has quickly gone viral.
Berg later said that he posted the video to social media because he felt that he “had to get something off his shoulders.”
“I didn’t know if anybody would listen,” he said. “I feel like I was at my weakest point.”
It’s safe to say that tons of people have listened, because the video has been viewed over 443,000 times and counting. Check it out for yourself below.
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