But some of these farmers do not follow cues to help foster the show’s central fantasy. Season 2’s cast included a millennial horse roper called Farmer Ty — older than the other men, with gunmetal gray hair and a Rob Lowe jaw. During a round of speed dating, he found himself paired with a New York real estate agent. “Does it bring you peace?” she asked him, with a look of desperation in her eyes. He blinked back at her. “The country? Does it bring me peace? You know, I wouldn’t say that it brings me peace. I think it’s — I’m in a peaceful place. Just as much as, for you, being able to get out brings you peace, the city brings me excitement.” She decided to go home, farmerless, later that episode.
There may be a deep appeal to the idea of frolicking through fields, but the fact remains that American agriculture is, by all accounts, really hard — stressful, economically precarious and hard on the body. For decades, urban consumers like me have grazed on cheap produce, largely oblivious to the reality: the squeezing of family farming by massive agribusiness concerns, the fact that the average age of farmers is now pushing 60, the fact that farmers are as much as 3.5 times more likely than the general population to die by suicide.
“Farmer Wants a Wife” is at its most compelling in the rare moments it allows its bachelors to get real about this. In brief cutaways, they allude to the pressure and loneliness of life on the farm or the family tragedies that forced them to step up and work. You sense in them a keen awareness that the world is happy to milk farmers for their symbolic value but less interested in the reality of who they are.
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