Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow can we break the cycle of bigger farms and fewer farmers?
http://grist.org/food/how-can-we-break-the-cycle-of-bigger-farms-and-fewer-farmers/The calculus that drives farmers off the land, and drives the documentary Dryland, is simple and inexorable. Historian Keith Williams lays it out halfway through the movie: Think of the farmer cutting wheat by hand, then zoom forward in history, past the farmers harvesting with teams of horses, past the first tractors, past the first combines (so called because they combined the reaping, threshing, and winnowing in one machine), to the air-conditioned, satellite-guided modern combine. Well, that same change has really altered the farm size, which means the farm can grow, Williams says. More capitalization, they can get more equipment. All of this translates into more acreage per farm. But that also means fewer farmers.
More efficiency, more land, fewer farmers. Its also the calculus that has given us cheap food. Cheap food relies on ridiculously cheap grain. One farmer in the film notes that he bought a loaf of whole wheat bread for the same price that he sold an entire bushel of wheat.
Dryland, directed by Sue Arbothnot and Richard Wilhelm, is a wistful documentary lots of long shots on beautiful empty fields, empty storefronts, empty streets, rusting equipment and rightfully so. The way of life it captures is contracting, ratcheting in on itself, leaving small towns that are unable to support businesses, and schools without students.
http://vimeo.com/67524133
The documentary follows Josh Knodel and Matt Miller, two friends in the town of Lind, Wash. When Miller finishes high school, he is one of eight graduates in his class. The boys fix up old combines to enter in the yearly destruction derby, the cultural high point for many families in the area. The movie follows them as they become a dominant force in the competition. There are always parts to be scrounged, because there are plenty of old combines aging out of their useful lives. Those old combines had to come from somewhere: Farmers who failed, or who upgraded to the newer and better model. But, as one farmer points out, at $350,000 for a new combine, you gotta cut a lot of acres to make a payment on that.
FBaggins
(26,727 posts)The story is about the plight of the mid-sized farm... yet those supposedly "mid-sized" farms are usually the decendants of the farms that gobbled up the family farms not so many decades ago - and they were just a continuation of a well-established trend.
By many accounts, agriculture once represented as much as 90% of the workforce in this country. That dropped to closer to 60% by the time of the Civil War... then 30% around WWI... then half of that by WWII. Down to single-digits in the 60s. Now we're down to somewhere in the 1-2% range.
In other words... it isn't a "cycle". It's an ongoing process continues to devour the comparatively smaller farms - except for those hundreds of thousands of "lifestyle" and "retirement" farms.
mopinko
(70,078 posts)the small farm movement is a real thing. i just talked to a great candidate for david obey's seat in upper wisconsin. kelly westlund.
she has been up there working with farmers to keep their land, to grow crops besides corn!!!, and to market directly.
chicago is growing the farm economy here as fast as they can. both incentives and infra for new farms in the city, and a great, great, great system of farmers markets for the area farmers who are still out there on the old farms.
farming is definitely changing.
check out kelly. she knows her soil conservation and renewable energy, too.
she will also help mary burke send scott walker packing.
here is a real chance to put your money where your heart is-
http://www.kellywestlund.com