The farming life touches a deep emotional chord in most Americans. Most of us aren’t that far removed from the farm, particularly here in the Midwest. The choice to be a farmer or rancher is very much a lifestyle choice, but most of us don’t understand what a difficult business farming is today.
I was born in Bloomington, Illinois and spent my early childhood in Chenoa, before my family moved to Fairmount, Indiana, another farm town about 180 miles to the east. While my father didn’t farm, my grandfather and several friends & relatives did. I couldn’t avoid playing and working on farms while growing up, and taking vocational agriculture classes in school. My mother ran the office for the local ag-chemical company and we were all very aware of the ups and downs of the farm economy and the demands of each season. I was in high school in the 1970’s, consumed with all of the typical high school things, but even so I saw too many of my friends’ families go from full-time farmers, to part-time farmers, to losing their farms as government policies, production methods, commodity prices, interest rates, and real estate taxes seemed to conspire against them. I saw many 80 and 160 acre farms gobbled up by giant industrial operations owned by corporations or investors like insurance companies. I’m sure it was a great improvement in efficiency, but it helped kill small communities all across the nation.
USA Today’s Mort Zuckerman recently wrote, “Just think: In 1800, about three quarters of the U.S. labor force was devoted to agriculture. Today, it is less than 3 percent.”
Making more of the general public aware of what farming today has evolved into, and bringing communities closer to food production and an understanding of how agriculture impacts their lives beyond food production (water & land use, effect on water quality, air quality, regional employment, and so many other areas) will be key to increasing the sustainability of our farms, ranches, and ultimately our communities themselves. We really need to restore that community connection we lost when we lost the small family farm, and there is a movement to do just that. How? By bringing back the small family farm, V 2.0.
