Chuck Groth vividly remembers the sea of faces on the Pierre hill between Riggs High School and the state Capitol during a rally over a crisis in farm country.

“That was in the midst of the last collapse in farmland values which resulted in a lot of people facing the loss of their farms,” he said.

“Farm prices were down, land values had escalated and escalated and then they dropped all of a sudden, not unlike what is happening in some parts of the country with housing right now,” Groth said.

Thirty-three buses had transported many of the estimated 10,000 people to Pierre that day.

“We had people sitting in classrooms listening to the intercom,” he said. “We had the entire auditorium packed in the bleachers and on the floor. It was amazing.

“I have not again seen that many people dealing with ag issues in South Dakota,” he said.

But he has seen and heard plenty in his 34-year career with the South Dakota Farmers Union when it comes to the highs and lows of agriculture.

Groth has lobbied in the Legislature, coordinated fly-ins to Washington, D.C., written and edited the Union Farmer publication, hosted radio programs and served as a contact person for Farmers Union members, the public and the press.

He retired as of Friday, but along with some fishing and traveling, he will stay active with the farm organization he has worked for since 1974 and with volunteer work.

After growing up on a family farm near Inkster, N.D., about 30 miles northwest of Grand Forks on the edge of the Red River Valley, Groth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in political science at the University of North Dakota.

His first job after graduation was in communications for the North Dakota Regional Medical Program, one of the last “Great Society” initiatives under President Johnson. But after about six months, the program was phased out in the Nixon administration, and Groth returned to the farm.

In the spring of 1974, he learned of the editor’s job at the South Dakota Farmers Union and, after a one-day delay for an interview when the transmission in his car decided to die in the farm’s driveway, he was hired.

He’s worked for five Farmers Union presidents in his career, starting with Ben Radcliffe and ending with Doug Sombke. In between were Lee Swenson, Dallas Tonsager and Dennis Wiese.

Groth’s job has taken him to conventions throughout the country and abroad. He attended cooperative programs in Belarus in 1995 and Mozambique in 1999. He was part of a trade mission to Cuba in 2004.

“For a long time, I coordinated our participation in the Washington fly-in, which is a lobbying trip to Washington,” he said.

On the fly-ins, done one to three times a year, Farmers Union leaders and members meet with South Dakota’s congressional delegation and senators and representatives from other states.

“We always felt like the best people to talk about what farmers needed were farmers themselves and not our Washington lobbyists,” Groth said.

Working as communications director for the farm organization always brought new challenges and problems and was “different all the time,” he said.

“There would always be some new thing come up, whether it be a drought or a flood or a financial situation or whatever,” he said.

If there is a downside, it might be a level of frustration when issues critical to farmers and farm life are unsuccessful despite years of effort. For example, the Farmers Union has supported tax reform off and on in South Dakota, but so far it remains unfinished business.

“While I’m enthusiastic about the improved rural economy today, there are an awful lot less people out there in rural South Dakota than there used to be when I started even,” Groth said.

But he is optimistic about the future.

“I think someday we will see a pick up of population because people are going to get tired of living in an ‘anthill’ or ‘beehive’ on the coasts and they’re going to say, ‘Maybe these wide open spaces, maybe they’re not such a bad place to live,’” Groth said.

One of the most fascinating projects for him has been his involvement as an interviewer of people who shaped the early days of agricultural cooperatives through the Cooperative Legacy project.

For the past four years, he has collected audio interviews of 81 individuals, as old as 94 and as young as 53, who were involved in dairy cooperatives, oil companies, elevators, rural electric and telephone cooperatives.

These were all people who were on the ground floor of the cooperative movement in South Dakota. So far, there are 130 to 140 hours of recorded interviews that Groth now hopes to convert to transcripts as well.

“So many had World War II stories to tell,” he said. “All the way from working on the farm here in South Dakota, to maybe working in war plants, to serving in all branches of the service, combat.”

Sometimes the individual would get emotional if a question Groth asked unlocked a certain memory.

Groth prepared a list of 60 to 100 questions for each interview, but sometimes one was all that was needed to get someone recalling years of work.

He relayed the story of one such person.

“I asked him the first question, and about an hour later he said, ‘Am I giving you too much detail?’” Groth said, laughing.

“I didn’t have to ask him any (more) questions, he just launched into his story.”

In retirement, Groth also may do some contract work with Farmers Union organizations in states that can’t afford a full-time communications director. He also wants to continue his involvement with the Cooperative Legacy project.