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a dozen cities to raise awareness.
• Bill Gross, a North Dakota farm boy who now flies for UPS out of Anchorage, Alaska, started Farm Rescue in 2006 in his home state with three volunteers.
• "We started helping farmers six years ago because I noticed changing demographics in rural America," he said. "Forty or 50 years ago it used to be that neighbors could do all of the work if something happened (to a farmer). Now we're seeing fewer family farms, less children on each farm, and it has simply become harder for neighbors to help one another. ... Just one injury or illness could be the end of a family farm."
• Farm Rescue has since expanded into South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota; has been incorporated into a nonprofit with a board of directors, five paid staff members and an annual operating budget of $350,000; is approaching 250 business sponsors, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Fargo-based RDO Equipment Co., which supplies the tractors and combines; and has a national network of volunteer laborers.
• "We have a database of nearly 1,000 volunteers," Gross said. "Right now we have people from Atlanta and Kentucky in North Dakota. For the harvest this fall (in the region) we have people coming from Pennsylvania, Arizona, Washington, Oregon."
• Donations also come from around the U.S. National exposure has helped. Farm Rescue has been featured on cable and network television shows and in national publications, and Gross was invited to address the Republic National Convention in 2008.
• "We have come a long ways from April 11, 2006, when we helped our first farmer," a North Dakota producer who had lost his right hand in a farming accident, (Continued on page 27)
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