The Agricultural Crisis as a crisis of culture; Wendell Berry
The following is my take on a selection from Environmental Studies, by Thomas Easton. This is it in a nutshell, tried to get the just of what the author was saying. Please leave a comment of your take on these issues.
The author tells about his childhood home of Henry County, Kentucky. He tells of a farming county where farmers grew the necessities for life themselves. They raise cattle, grew vegetables and had fields of grain. Back then there was a way not only to provide for his or her, own family, but also to sell excess goods to other, for profits.
Today those very same farms are still run, but in a more 21st century style; less diversity, fewer owners, and on a much larger scale. Smaller farms are becoming fewer, as there isn’t enough money, labour or interest to keep them afloat. Even family members of farm owners are becoming less interested in taking over the family farm, lured to urban areas nowadays.
Sanitation is another reason small farmers can’t survive. The only equipment designed right now is for larger farms, because it is so expensive. Small farms would never see profit with the same equipment in place today, as they would only be paying off the equipment required to be sanitary.
Farmers who did stay in the business have had to expand, to stay big enough to generate profit. Shifting away from "quality to quantity".[1]
Farming has turned into a productivity race, who can make the most the fastest. We have lost our connection with nature, lost the appreciation for healthy, fertile soil. In doing so we are destroying the very thing we depend on, our soil.
As this new transition takes farmers into the city to a more easy life, they are giving up on certain traits. Farmers are well trained bosses, having knowledge of how to run a good farm, what to do during bad seasons, and how to grow. When this farmer moves to the city he loses his authority, his expertise. He now answers to someone, he can no longer go on his gut, his past experiences, and he goes by what someone else tells him, or does it by the book.
This knowledge of years of practice is lost and replaced by a job that is written in a manual, a simple task that can be replaced in an instance.
This farmers knowledge on the reverse, cannot just be taken over by some corporate giant, who has a to do list, manual for farming. This practice and the knowledge to make it successful are passed down for generations, from living and depending on the success of that farm.
Farmers also depend on keeping the land sustainable, which cannot be said about larger, commercialized farms. These farms are in it for capital, paying off their large farm bills, and trying to make a bigger profit, instead of the sustainment of the land it exploits.
This type of agriculture is unsustainable. After all what you do too one thing, affects other things1. So if a culture destroys the land on which it grows its food, it will simply have no food, and die. We must work together with the land, instead of against it.
No comments:
Post a Comment