From Generation to Generation: Eli Graham Builds a Family and a Future in Farming

By Anna Holmes

Louisiana Farm Bureau News

For Eli Graham, farming has always been about more than being the next generation in his family to farm. It is about raising a family, working alongside people who have become like family and learning to take life as it comes.

Graham is the second generation in his family to farm sugarcane. He grew up around sugarcane, grain crops and cattle, and this year marks his eighth harvest.

But as his own family has grown, farming has taken on a different meaning.

Graham and his wife have been married for six years and have three children. His wife, a registered nurse, did not grow up around agriculture. But once she started helping around the farm during cane planting, she found she enjoyed farm life more than she expected.

“She loved it,” Graham said.

One day, after they had moved fields, his wife needed to leave to pick up the children from school and daycare. When she got off the tractor, Graham could tell something was bothering her.

“I don’t want to leave,” she told him.

That moment showed him how much she had come to enjoy being on the farm.

Now, their three children are growing up around the farm, too. Graham can already see how each of them may find their own place in agriculture.

His oldest will most likely be interested in cattle, while his middle daughter enjoys going to the farm with him to watch the machinery and see the farm during harvest.

For Graham, there is something special about raising his children on the farm.

“It just kind of hit me,” Graham said. “We farm for a living, but we’re just like anybody else.”

At the same time, farming means balancing the needs of a family with the unpredictable demands of an operation.

“The kids have to go to school. They need this. They need that. They need to go to the doctor,” Graham said.

His daughters take dance lessons on different days of the week, and there are school pickups, daycare and all the other responsibilities that come with raising children.

“Who’s getting who, who’s bringing who where and something’s going to happen,” Graham said. “So, it takes a village. It does.”

That village extends beyond Graham’s immediate family.

His operation relies heavily on workers through the H-2A program, many of whom return year after year. One worker has been coming for more than 20 years, while others have returned for 10 or 12 years.

Graham said the workers are important to the farm and to their own families in Mexico.

“It’s a pretty simple symbiotic relationship, as far as I can tell,” Graham said. “I wouldn’t be growing sugarcane, probably wouldn’t be farming without them.”

During harvest, the workers spend a significant amount of time together. Because sugarcane harvest takes place around the holidays, Graham and his employees often spend that time together, gathering, eating and sharing moments that have made them like family.

When the workers leave after harvest, Graham misses them, and the workers miss the farm.

“We spend just as much time with each other as we do our own families,” Graham said.

Farming has also taught Graham that setbacks are part of the job, but so is finding a way forward.

His first year of farming was the first big trade war with China. Then came COVID-19, inflation and the 2023 drought. Graham said he is still “licking the wounds” from that drought in 2026.

Through all the challenges and uncertainties that come along with farming, Graham’s family has continued to grow.

“I feel like doing what I do for a living bettered me for having kids,” Graham said. “And then having kids kind of taught me things out here.”

Farming has taught him that many things are outside of his control. Equipment can break. Parts can be delayed. Weather can change plans. But Graham continues to move forward.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Graham said.

At the end of the day, he enjoys being outside, working with the land, being his own boss and working alongside a group of people he enjoys.

There are days when it is raining sideways and 40 degrees, and he and his employees are working through mud, wondering why they chose this life.

But there are also countless days when he looks forward to coming to work.

And for Graham, that life is defined by the people who make the farm what it is: his wife, his children and the people who work alongside him.