Who’s a farmer?
Farmers are now good news. When I was a kid they were not. They were hicks, people with dirt under their fingernails.
Now they are honored. But which farmers? Here’s the incredulous response from Food, Mommy, from a farming family in Kentucky (I love to follow blogs from working farmers).
Apparently to many of the visitors to the Incredible Food Show in Lexington, Ky. this past weekend [a farmer] is someone who is growing their own food in their backyard or selling at a “Farmer’s” market.
it really shocked me that every time I mentioned to someone that we were there on behalf of farmers to encourage conversation about how food is produced, the instant response was, “Oh, I love that. I visit the Farmer’s Market all the time.” Or, “My sister has a garden. That’s great.”
Food, Mommy is saddened and puzzled that productive large farmers are dismissed as practising industrial agriculture.
The produce farmer in Ohio, or even California, who is large enough to service several grocery stores in our state now has a big “X” on his/her face. Some folks are just convinced that since the farm is not “local” and is producing food on several hundred acres instead of two, that the product is bad, industrial food. At what point does a farmer or farm become “industrial?” And when did “success” become a bad word in agriculture?
I’m with her. How did farmer become a word only for tiny, unmechanized startups?
Steve Jobs creates cool technological devices, has them produced in China, and is a candidate for sainthood. American (market or truck) farmers create cool ways of delivering asparagus and lettuce year round, employ people in the United States (Mexicans if Americans don’t want the jobs), and are relegated to the outer circles of politically unacceptable hell.
Isn’t there an inconsistency here? How is it possible to wait breathlessly for Steve to improve on the tablets of Moses while shunning farmers who move beyond Cain’s farm and Abel’s pasture. And even Cain and Abel needed more than the 3000 square feet now often described as a “farm.” 3000 square feet is, after all, only 7/100ths of an acre, neither enough to feed a person nor to make a living, valuable as it may be in teaching children about growing plants.
Edit. This quote from Russ Parsons of the LA Times puts it well:
Agriculture is a business. Farming without a financial motive is gardening. I use that line a lot when I’m giving talks, and it always gets a laugh. But it’s deadly serious. Not only do farmers have expenses to meet just like any other business, but they also need to be rewarded when they do good work. Any plan that places further demands on farmers without an offsetting profit incentive is doomed to fail.
Another great post, Rachel. I think people want a warm and fuzzy family farm. that’s cool. Efficient acreage with modern science doesn’t fit in with the agrarian fantasy.
I like to tell people that sometimes science has the answer!
(I’m also not saying there haven’t been serious abuses against nature, and workers, in huge agri-business, but you’d really think science was an enemy in talking to some people. Abusive farming is the enemy. )
Steve, thanks for that. Maybe I should do a post on you, how you backed into farming, and what you have learned about how to balance traditional and modern, expectations of your customers and realities of life in Mexico. Are you up for that?
Interesting to make the distinction between farmer and gardner! Steve, I agree. A ‘warm and fuzzy family farm” is not going to produce enough send food for the the hungry townies to buy. I love your beans (as do my kids in Homer, AK, who get a gift pack a few times a year) and am grateful that you are an efficient entrepreneur.
There is another item about size (evil exploitive agribiz vs. admirable little guys) that has to do with soil and climate. In some areas it takes tens or scores of acres to feed a family and have overage to sell. In some areas it takes hundreds or thousands and a large percentage of the land surface on the globe in non-arrable. Most people who grow up in a city just think that dirt is dirt — drop a seed and in a little while you have wonderful harvests. This perception smacks of the philosophy of the ‘noble savage’ in 18thC Europe (mentioned before?) Old methods were not fabulous or they would not have been left behind.
Anytime!
Agree with Steve – I’d love to transport a group of ‘fuzzy farmers’ over here to Burundi, and plunk them down in the small, but profit- and food-security oriented local smalholder farms.
Diana.