Happy Farmer First: Meet Greg Christianson
For our second Farmer First of 2025, we’re excited to introduce you to a man we consider a tall, tall tree.
A few months ago, our team spent time together for in-person work days. The time was productive and rich; it’s such a gift to be in the same room! But our favorite time that week wasn’t around tables, it was out visiting farmers. Meet Greg Christianson, a Kansas-based farmer, author, and longtime friend to AgGrandize Global. He raises goats and grows a variety of crops in a way that’s easy to respect, but it’s his reflections on the work, his contemplative, kindly way of communicating and listening that really stood out.
As we bumped along the pasture, crunching over plants and avoiding potholes, checking goats with Greg is a serene experience. “When you’re a farmer, it’s not just what you do, it’s who you are,” Greg said. “Farming is an identity thing, and when you lose your farm or when things go badly, it’s a loss of identity, not just a work loss.”
Farmers looking to end their careers often face tough decisions.
If farming is an identity-heavy job, what’s a farmer to do when he’s ready to retire? If the kids don’t want to take over the farm, a farmer has two basic options: have a farm sale or find fresh people to come learn the work.
Greg is choosing the latter and now has two young men working the farm with him, learning from and alongside him as he coaches them into greater responsibility.
“I didn’t want to have a farm sale. They haul all your stuff out into the yard and sell it off. To them it’s just stuff but to the farmer it’s their life, it’s stories. Farm sales are just so sad, which is why I’m glad to have young men slowly buying me out. The farm will go to people I know who want to get into farming, which is much better than selling it off to strangers.”
As Greg shared about these young men taking on farming and doing the work well, hope was etched all over his face. You could see it, the realization that the work would continue and this place of sustenance and peace and honest hard work would outlive Greg.
In his book, Greg writes, “I’ve heard that you can live 40 days without food, four days without water, four minutes without air but not four seconds without hope.”
Yet that hope for his farm pales in comparison to the Hope Greg has found through his faith, how it fuels him in his work as he follows Jesus. Greg’s book, Seeing God’s Hand on the Farm, features 50 devotional-style stories that offer inspiration, encouragement, and challenge in a way that’s accessible and—our personal favorite thing—ag-themed through and through.
Special thanks to Greg for taking the time to show us around the farm and share his faith and stories.
He traveled overseas with an AgGrandize team to help build grain bins and has been a great supporter of faith-based ag development work both at home and abroad, and we can’t think of a better farmer-friend to celebrate for this Farmer First—thank you, Greg!
