In celebration of Earth Day, Luke Bryan joins Ty Bentli to salute farming communities. Luke shares his journey from working on his father’s Georgia peanut farm, to producing his annual Farm Tour to benefit scholarship programs in agricultural areas. He also shares his harvest competition with Blake Shelton. Listen to the episode in-full anytime on-demand on Apple Music Country here.
Luke Bryan on his farming skills versus Blake Shelton’s farming skills…
Ty Bentli: No, it’s you and Blake. Every time, depending on who I talk to, the other one’s the better farmer.
Luke Bryan: He’s pretend farming.
Ty Bentli: What does he do down there?
Luke Bryan: I mean, he’s just putting out like wild grasses, stuff that literally will grow on Mars. So I mean, I’m actually planting stuff that human beings can enjoy. I’m not feeding a bunch of rabbits and moles and stuff. Blake’s farming like earthworms and stuff…
Luke Bryan on thinking he’d grow up and pursue a farming career…
But my first thought of a farmer is a white farmhouse with some grain bins in the back, tractors and stuff. I mean, I spent many, many years thinking that that would be what I looked like. I mean, I really thought, for many, many years, I’d be in farming and in the ag industry. So the fact that I’ve somehow pulled off the music business is still quite shocking.
The biggest thing was when I got out of college I went and worked for my dad. My dad owned a fertilizer company, and we owned a peanut mill. So in the fall, during harvest, we would work at the peanut mill. It was literally 15-hour days, breathing dust. It’s crazy because at the time, I mean, I’m 24, 25 years old, and I remember physically feeling like I had been in a gang fight, played a football game. That’s how hard we were working. It was 24/7 and just working constantly during peanut season. But then, you know, the main thing was I was playing … I was still gigging. I was still playing concerts Fridays and Saturday nights. I mean, I’d be in the damn peanut mill on a Thursday, and God, I mean, I’d have to go drive through the night and sing college shows with peanut dust all in my lungs. It was a wonder. I probably sounded pretty awful back then.
Luke Bryan on the global necessity of farmers…
When you look at Ukraine, I mean they’re one of the top producers of wheat… Farmers have to work a lot harder, with a lot less, to feed a lot more people these days. So as the population of the world increases and as the world leans on the farming community, you’ve got to have that as a necessity and an important part in society.
Luke Bryan on tending to his small farm during the last two years…
Over COVID, you know, I mean, I don’t know. The video of me planting all that sweet corn … I was so bored and didn’t have anything to do. I went and bought a planter, I bought a garden tractor, I bought a harrow disc. And I just went to town on this one field and planted like five acres of sweet corn. I call my dad, and I’m like, “Daddy, we’re planting corn.” He goes, “Ain’t that something? You moved to Nashville to get away from this, and now 15, 18 years later, you’re back to planting corn.” But the main thing of what was fun about it was … I’ve been so busy. I’ve got some buddies in my world. They’re trying to do a garden, or they’re … I’m like, “Buddy, that field looks horrible. You don’t have it right.” And they’re like, “Well, you get out there and make it look better.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t have time. I got to go do all this.” So finally I had time. When I got done getting this field ready to plant, I was like, “Boys, behold. That’s what perfection looks like.”
Luke Bryan on the history of his Farm Tour…
Ty Bentli: Let’s talk about real farms. Let’s talk about the farms that you go to. The Farm Tour, what a great idea. You had so much history, playing back at the farms in Georgia, that you knew you could do a concert in a field.
Luke Bryan: That’s how Farm Tour got started, you know? I knew that if we put a stage in a field and did it right, we’d have 3,000, 4,000 people show up. That’s kind of what we did. My first Farm Tour, I guess Rain is a Good Thing had just come out. The actual video for Rain is a Good Thing was shot at our first Farm Tour site. So as my career kept going on the up and up, I was able to grow the Farm Tour and go to different states. We played Georgia several years in a row, and then we were like, “You know, we’ll give Georgia a break, and then we’ll go more Midwest.” So we just kind of popped around to wherever the markets feel like we need to go. And we’ve gotten to meet amazing people, amazing farming families. I mean, met the old farmer one year, and then we’d come back and he had passed away, and we sat out there by the bus, and we’d all cry that we, lost this old farmer buddy of ours that let us play. I mean, it’s been a true beautiful experience, too. There’s been some chaos, too, where we’re parked in a field that would get five inches of rain, and all of our tour buses and stuff, we’d have to get tow trucks to get everything out. But man, over the years, it’s just been fun doing the Farm Tours.
