Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Goldschmidt's research illustrated. The decline of family farming does
not just harm farmers. It hurts quality of life in the whole of society.
Corporate farms are good for productivity, but not much else. They bring
a decline in rural population, increased poverty and income inequality,
lowered numbers of community services, diminished democratic partic-
ipation, decreased retail trade, and increased environmental pollution. Says
Lobao: 'This type of farming is very limited in what it can do for a community. . . we
need farms that will be viable in the future, correspond to local needs and remain wedded
to the community.' 19
Wendell Berry, poet and farmer, has long drawn attention to what
happens during modernization. An agricultural crisis, he says, is a crisis
of culture:
A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among
people soundly established on the land; it nourishes and safeguards a human
intelligence of the earth that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The
growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of
this country. We now have only the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow
another generation to pass without doing what is necessary to enhance and embolden
the possibility now perishing with them, we will lose it altogether. 20
Nevertheless, since Berry wrote this in the 1970s, another generation has
passed.
The central question is really this: are we content with agricultural
systems becoming larger in scale and producing anonymous commodities,
or do we expect something more from them? 21 Family farms do more than
just produce food. They help to build a tangible culture of connections
to the land. Lorraine Garkovich and her colleagues' study of farm families
in Kentucky shows how important are the accumulated connections
between family farms and the land: 'The family farm is more than just soil and
livestock. It is also traditional strategies for how to farm, care for, and use the land and
traditional meanings and values attached to the land.' 22 On these farms, time passes
slowly and experience accumulates into individual and collective memories.
These farmers are good at story-telling, and these stories bind commun-
ities, giving meaning and direction to lives. But when the shared under-
standing breaks down, then dissatisfaction and, eventually, conflict can
emerge. Today, family farmers mourn the decline of rural communities;
no one has time to talk anymore, and many people in rural areas no longer
know anything about farming. Canadian author Sharon Butala says:
The most potent reason of all to save small-scale family farms [is] because those
who farmed in this way had the time to ponder and enjoy and be instructed and
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