Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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out and possibly dominate organics. In the middle are midsized family
organic farms, which I profiled in chapters 4 and 5. These farmers are the
real heroes, the real future of organic agriculture - if they can overcome
both the grassroots critics and the powerful forces of agribusiness conquest.
Organic farming is pulled in these two directions because of its success.
Yet, even with the growing acceptance of organic farming, our relationships
toward rural America are still complex and unresolved. Urbanites imagine a
romantic rural countryside with farms dotting the landscape and the rural
folks living in harmony with the environment, but in truth the industrial
agricultural setting is very different. Many industrial operations are more
like a factory located on an exploitable piece of land, rather than a farm
integrated into its ecological and social surroundings. And many of the
rural people in this setting also relate to agriculture as if it were merely an
industry rather than a primary activity in which people work closely with
the land.
This became clear to me in a small diner on the plains of eastern Colo-
rado. This is industrial ag country, with average farmsize at several thousand
acres. I ordered a cup of coffee, and here the choice is coffee or decaf (forget
about fancy urban choices like cappuccino). As the waitress sloshed the
plain white ceramic mug down in front of me, she reached in her apron
to toss me a few packets of non-dairy creamer. (This stuff is so chemical-
laden it is actually flammable - test it sometime.) I politely asked for some
milk to put in my coffee instead, and the waitress looked at me as if I were
from Mars. “Why?” she asked incredulously. “I just like it better,” I meekly
responded. But I wanted to shout,“I don't want to put mysterious chemicals
in my coffee! You are here in rural America. You should understand the
value of fresh air and nature. If the farms here weren't industrialized, you
would be able to see the links between rural life and nature.” But most
areas of industrial agriculture are indeed this removed from their regional
geography. Farmers sit in the air-conditioned cabs of their tractors and
drive their thousand-acre fields, spraying pesticides or chemical fertilizers
(or paying the agrichemical dealer to do it). They are removed from the
nature that should actually grow their crops, because it is mostly suppressed
by technology. And economically they are hardly able to make a living on
the land unless they control thousands of acres. All the while, many urban
Americans decorate their kitchens with country motifs of red barns and
sing “Old MacDonald” to their kids. But Farmer MacDonald is hard to
find nowadays - with one cow, one pig, a rooster, and a chicken,
E-I-E-I-O
.
More likely the industrial farmer has a confined feeding operation of three
thousand hogs and has to spray tons of toxic chemicals in order to control
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