Farm owner responds to accusations of slave ownership
Farmers in southern Kentucky are fighting back after a video of them selling farm produce and livestock to hungry, desperate customers was widely shared on social media.
On Tuesday, a Facebook video of a farmer selling livestock to a starving woman went viral on social networking sites.
The video was shared over 100,000 times and was shared more than 400 times by users, according to the Farm Marketing Association of Kentucky.
In the video, a farm manager and his assistant are seen sitting at the back of a pickup truck and feeding the woman, as the video shows her getting into the truck and running toward them.
“I think that we’re just trying to make people feel better, I mean it’s a good thing, it’s just a matter of time,” said Steve Becker, a farmer and owner of Beaver Farms.
“We’re just like, ‘Whoa, whoa, you need to go get food.
You need to get food,'” Becker said.
The Farm Marketing Alliance of Kentucky, an advocacy group for farmers, says the video is a response to a “disgusting and offensive” message from a local business.
The video shows Becker selling cattle and sheep to an elderly woman who sits on the truck.
The farm manager, who sells about 50,000 heads of cattle a year, said he and his associate had no intention of hurting anyone.
“If I’d been in this position I’d never have had to deal with this,” Becker said of the video.
“It was an opportunity for us to make some extra money,” he said.
Becker said the farm manager is not the owner of the farm, but he said the farmer is a close family friend and neighbor.
Beau said the man who made the video had a history of racial and religious discrimination.
“He’s a person who has been in the black community for a long time, for a very long time,” Becker told ABC News.
Beach said the video caught him off guard.
“You can see what’s going on,” he added.
“You can hear the conversation going on.
It was very unsettling.”
The video was first shared by the Farm Marketer and Farmer Facebook page on Tuesday, and it has since been shared more over 100 times.
“That was just an opportunity to help the poor, and the people who were just sitting there eating and going to the store, and that’s what we do,” Becker added.
Bekel said he was not the only farmer to have a negative experience selling farm products to hungry customers.
“There are a lot of farms in southern California that have been dealing with that situation for years, and they’ve never been able to find a solution,” he explained.
“I think it’s not just the farm.
There’s a lot going on on the farm that goes unnoticed.”
The Farm Marketers and Farmer said they were not able to comment on the authenticity of the footage or the owner’s motivations.