A Season On The Farm

[Eric]

I have walked these fields daily for over a year. Every pass includes observation, contemplation, and sometimes interaction. Every ounce of my being has become inserted right here between the natural world and the one created by men. It is my job to somehow bring forth enough of the earth’s offerings to justify my continuance as a farmer. How does a market economy put a value on the health and vitality of a farm? Does Adam Smith’s invisible hand reward the good caretakers and punish the bad? I think not. In fact it is often just the opposite.
I was twelve years old the last time I wore through so many socks. My back has been tired for months. After only two years of farming I’ve either aged rapidly or I just need a good winters sleep. All that aside, a deep connection has formed between myself and what I like to call The Green Man. The Green Man is said to be the ‘thought of all plants and trees’. He is Mother Nature’s other half. Occasionally I can hear his thoughts. Mostly he laughs at me. But every now and again the wind and rustling trees embrace me. A tiny bit of his secrets move through my core. He breaths his spirit through me and at that very moment I know things without hesitation that would otherwise pass me by. The rustling in the woods is heavy and decisive. Without seeing, I know what it is, where it is going, and what it has been eating. A few loud drumbeats bounce on the ground somewhere out of sight. Black walnuts fall to the ground and await the hungry squirrels.
The air, rain, sun, and wind, all working into my decisions, endlessly challenging my efforts to play conductor of this land. We bring our offerings to market as if to satisfy some hungry and immortal creature worshipped by modern man. “Produce more! Produce more!” That is the battle cry for next season. But how much will be enough to satisfy this beast? We call this creature The Market Economy. The only hope is that this powerful force will be kind to us. It seems that we are at a turning point in this country. The Market Economy is developing a conscience. A concern for more than low cost, expediency, and quantity have morphed this previously crude monster into something more inquisitive. A concern for the natural order of creation has emerged. “We must stop pesticide poisoning, animal abuse, hormone tinkering, gene manipulations, wasteful fossil fuel consumption and pollution”. These are the murmurings emerging from The Market Economy. “We must rebuild rural America, reconnect with the origins of our food, and relearn how to build community”. The murmurs grow louder. Finally, as the old paradigm crumbles around us and our so-called leaders try desperately to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, we the people will stand up and form a new economy. The once fearsome beast, The Market Economy is fast becoming acquainted with that Great Spirit of the woods.

Welcome to the Green Man Farm. Happy eating!!

[Eric]

You're right on Frank. One thing left unmentioned in the skewed economic equation of agriculture is corn and oil subsidy. When government reduces taxes on oil companies to increase exploration and production it drives down the cost of unsustainable and destructive farm practices while increasing production by agribusiness growers. The situation is further aggravated by a government willing to lease it's public lands at unreasonably good terms to the very oil interests that finance the campaigns. We could go further with this point and say a government willing to wage war on behalf of oil interests in effort to offset the influence of an oil cartel (OPEC) further aggravates the problem by driving down the price. All this does little to help a small farmer that relies primarily on his own labor to produce good food, but does everything to help the industrial producer (I hesitate to call them farmers) that sits on a tractor all day and sprays petrochemical derived pesticides and fertilizer in their fields. That brings us to corn subsidies. Corn, subsidized by the acre has crept into every corner of the grocery store. Having been molecularly deconstructed and reconstructed into every conceivable artificial food product, this one singe cheap subsidized bulk grain drives down all food prices in the supermarket out of simple competition. Folks on a limited budget can by more food calories with less dollars in the form of cheap corn food products. It's a tough choice to make. An organic apple has only maybe 50-100 calories and probably costs more than a jumbo bag of corn chips with thousands of calories.

This entire mess spirals further out of control once we realize what is becoming known as the 'externalized costs' of our current agribusiness model. Industrial food producers and oil companies don't pay for the public health and environmental consequences of their actions. Bad food, bad air, bad water...who pays for that? If fixing these things were factored into the budget of these operations the problem would probably resolve itself. But how do you calculate these things and apply them to those responsible? Fact is, you can't hold industry economically accountable in an economy built on industrial irresponsibility. We need a new economy. Not a communist one, not a socialist one, and not a capitalist one. We need a local economy, where there is some chance for true accountability. This I believe, in true American fashion should come primarily of free choice and not government imposition. If it is the will of the people then government could and should play a role in encouraging such a scenario through appropriate agricultural policy, just as it has encouraged the opposite in the past. But, by and large an effort to 'relocalize' our economies must come from consumer choice.

Here I stand ready to offer that choice with my local produce and CSA memberships. I'll sell my butt off but it is always a challenge to swim upstream, convincing people that their consumer purchases are more than just dollars and sense.

[Eric]

Hi guys! Thanks Frank and Tracy for the feedback on the post. I'll try to comment more later after work hours. But Frank, I do love your last line, "The hand that operates in obscurity...". It reminds me of a quote from Thomas Jefferson, "Farming is the only honest occupation and everything else is thievery". He of course derived his income from his law practice but maintained a farm as well.

[Frank Callo]

Few thoughts

There is a limit to how much one should produce, this limit is simply what one CAN produce. Your dilemma, as I read it, comes to this: a farmer should be able to support his/her self and family by servicing a modest number of consumers. A modest number might be the people who buy their produce at a farmer's market, a restaurant or two who buys greens or some other product, a moderately sized CSA, maybe 40 shares. I worked on a CSA with 40 shares and this was enough to keep five people pretty busy from April to November. If an operation of this sizes fails to sustain a farm family it seems that there is a back story that we should look at.

When Lincoln signed the Department of agriculture into existence, 90% of Americans lived and worked as farmers. Less than 20 years later that number dropped to 49%. Many of these farmers were "tenants" working on "dummy homesteads" set up by corporations to grow food for profit. The long march to the ruin of a whole way of life begins right about here.

If 90% of the people in the country are growing food, to whom are they selling it? The 10% of the population who are not farmers (everyone from bankers to blacksmiths, from doctors to miners) is nearly the entire market, the rest being comprised by commodity trade beyond our national borders. International commodity trade was probably not important to any but the largest land holders.

Farming was not a way of making a living, it was a way of making a life. You didn't make much money and didn't need much. Farm families:

Often build the structures in which they lived and worked
Provided virtually ALL of the food they ate
Provided their own heating and cooking fuel
Produced many goods such as clothing and furnishings

This is to say that farming was an activity done largely for its own sake with the revenues produced from crops providing the minimum needed for things you couldn't, or didn't want to make yourself.

What money was made from the sale of produce was judiciously spent on tools, hardware, and the occasional luxury item such as a musical instrument or maybe just a Florida orange (why we still put them in Christmas stockings, they used to be special). Saving and thrift were virtues that made a difference since without them your homestead would falter.

A nation full of self reliant farmers are, of course, not much of a market. The small percentage of people who relied upon farmers for food were likewise not much of a market force (except to the farmers themselves). In short, this system is no way to grow an economy. In a capitalist economy growth is everything.

By getting people off the farm and into cities. By using the labor "liberated" from farm work to produce consumer "goods" and "services" the economy produces both more consumers and more things to be consumed (economic growth). Finally, by producing as much "food" with as little human labor as possible, food finally becomes a valuable market commodity. All the family farms in the country would be of absolutely no value to a corporation like General Mills or Kellogg if the only market was 10% of the population. and so this is how we get where we are.

We need to relocalize and RESCALE everything. Forty families ought to be able to keep ONE family going. If this is not the case it is only because huge producers have an unfair (and unsustainable) advantage by virtue of their monstrous scale.

It means that more of us must make a moral decision to support local farmers even if it means sacrifice in other areas of life. It also means that more of us should BECOME farmers. It is simply inhuman to ask a single family to carry the responsibility of feeding more than a few other families.

The problem your post points toward is not ultimately a market problem except in that the market IS THE PROBLEM. We need other values beside market values. The market can't put a value on being able to work side by side with family and friends, on a sense of mastery or the security of knowing that, no matter what, you can meet your basic needs. Since these things have no market value (the only value we seem to be able to understand as a culture) they have NO value at all.

That invisible hand must be brought into the light. The hand of a friend, the hand that helps and holds and heals feels no need to remain invisible. The hand that must operate in obscurity is, without exception, the hand of a thief, a pervert or a cut throat.

[Tracie L. Hellwinckel]

The Phoenix will rise from the ashes out of the crumble of society. I'm not saying that Obama can or will "fix"things, but on November 4, 2008 the murmurs became a unified shout that folks want to move outside the box to grow and heal. It was definitely a sign, and hopefully a good omen. Many people have worked very hard for a long time to educate 1 person here and 5 people there in regards to unity with Earth and the Divine Spirit. We have carried messages through our DNA and passed them generation to generation. It feels that our magical world is returning. Maybe, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius is truly in full force around us.

Nicely written piece. Thanks for being a farmer. Remember this:

The Wagon