John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Rocker in his Concord home: Minds Crossing. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.
Since 1935, more than two-thirds of small and midsized farms in the United States have been swallowed up by huge mechanized factory farming corporations. These corporations plant thousands of acres of one or two crops, taking from the land as much as possible until they have completely depleted the soil.
High-tech farm equipment and chemicals hasten the destruction of the land. This farming industry is far removed from humanity’s connection with the land. The industry’s respect for the land is as rare as hens’ teeth. The scarcity of struggling family farms has resulted in some offering to be a unique novelty for a vacation getaway.
The lore of exurbanite profits reaped by providing food to the nation, and portions of the world, has led to mega Midwest corporate farms raising vast fields of wheat, corn, and soybeans. The central valley of California produces 90% of our carrots, celery, garlic, broccoli, artichokes, grapes, plums, and tangerines. These same corporations also make fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and weed killers; all of which degrade the soil. They exploit water sources, refusing to recognize that pouring water on naturally dry land year after year drains away water sources used by millions of people.
Rationing of water has already become a reality in the western U.S. This profit-driven agriculture results in increasing erosion from droughts, floods, and heat-driven winds. Since the first plowing, this ruinous agriculture has depleted the topsoil (rich loam) from 16” to fewer than 8” in the corn belt (Perilous Bounty, Tom Philpott). These corporations also manufacture expensive high-tech farm equipment that is designed for exclusive use on expansive acreage. In spite of all of these high-tech methods, the time is coming soon when the exhausted soil will no longer produce enough food to feed the American population. Meanwhile, the practices of these interlocking enormous corporations are generating billions of dollars for shareholders.
Small and midsized family farms are unable to compete with these interlocking corporations. They are too small to compete in volume or in price. The privileged supply chains are inaccessible. Modern farm equipment is unaffordable and designed mainly for huge mega-farms. Marketing competition from these corporations suppresses midsized farm profits. Mega-farms’ billion-dollar harvests of corn and soybeans are in demand to produce large amounts of corn syrup, fats, and additives for fast food production. “Thirty-seven percent of Americans eat at least one fast-food meal every day,” accounting for chronic diseases related to bad diet (Philpott).
However, the farmers of small and midsized farms may construct a pathway into a different future. These farmers step away from the factory farm to walk in wonder upon the land, their feet merging with the earth and the roots that sustain life. They are humanity’s ground of being. They are committed to cooperating with nature, not stealing from her. Midsized farms offer the advantage of flexibility in crop selection and adapting to the local terrain. The farmers nurture the soil with cover crops. They employ crop rotation. They explore means to heal the soil and ways to adjust for climate changes.
Farmers, of midsize and family farms, have the wisdom to adapt to the environment, not fight against it. They’ve learned patience as they wait for the rain to fall, the sun to warm the soil, the seeds to sprout, the crops to mature, the gift of the harvest — abundant or sparse. Farmers have the courage to face the risks of financial hardship, the threats of foreclosure, and the search for loans to finance next year’s planting. These farmers demonstrate hope when seeking markets dominated by interlocking corporations.
Family farmers are contemporary humanity’s link to the life-sustaining earth. Both Tom Philpott, Perilous Bounty, and Sarah Vogel, The Farmers Lawyer, advocate “The importance of midsize farms to saving the environment and improving the general moral and spiritual tone of the nation.”
However, Ian Frazier writes in the New York Review of Books, “Counting on midsized farms to save agriculture and the environment seems a long, long shot, for now.” But they have the ability, determination, a bond with the earth, and imagination, to project future sensible solutions needed to save our food production from destruction. Frazier writes, “They (only) need to have something crazy-American about them, some kind of ‘gee whiz!’”
The New England farmer fits the profile. They are pickers of rocks, dawn to dusk workers, entrepreneurs, soil testers, machine operators, innovators, conservationists, stubborn, and caretakers of the earth. The rest of the New Englanders must become the farmers’ partners. Meet them at their markets. Frequent stores that have locally sourced produce. At least one store in Concord displays pictures of the local farmers that sell their produce to the store. Purchase shares in a farm’s future harvest.
Together we shall demonstrate to the country credible alternatives to the pernicious trampling of the land by corporate mega-farms. And, by consuming fewer fast food meals as well as buying locally raised farm products, we shall once more be healthy people of a healthy land living on a hospitable earth.