Does #BigAg really feed people?

We live where there are lots of what look like "family farms," in a county that's part of a 2 state, 21 county Combined (Standard Metropolitan) Statistical Area [CSA]. Obviously, we live in a more rural sector of the CSA, one in which there are a number of farms that operate as Community Support Agriculture, a very different kind of CSA. Our state contains the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Just south of us is the State of Iowa, noted for its agriculture and its increasing agriculture related water pollution problems. We're also one of the Great Lakes states. To our East, Ohio is gaining increased notoriety for their growing problems with algae blooms.

what is all the field corn used for?

Photo by J. Harrington

Since we like to eat, and we depend on clean drinking water, we've become more and more interested in the linkage between agriculture, sustainable living, and water pollution. The way we look at things, corn grown for biofuels is an industrial use and should be regulated as if it were a manufacturing operation. Over the past few days, we've begun to reread a book we picked up a year or two ago. Immediately below is the title and an excerpt from the book.

Restoration Agriculture - Real-World Permaculture for Farmers

On the whole, unless someone has special circumstances, nobody is really making money in agriculture. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University has reported on numerous occasions that, of those farmers in the United States who file an IRS Schedule F (farm income and expenses), 80 percent receive the majority of their income from something other than farming. The fact that the USDA has huge agricultural subsidies (both direct and indirect) is evidence that there's something wrong with the economics of farming....

Why, we wonder, would people engage in farming if they have to have outside income to support their farming. Wouldn't that, according to other IRS regulations, make 80 percent or so of those farmers engaged in a hobby rather than a business?

wolf statue on Minneapolis' Native American Cultural Corridor

Photo by J. Harrington

Then today we came across an excerpt from a book that approaches food supply from a quite different perspective. The title and an excerpt are immediately below.

Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States - Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health

Despite the $13 billion corporate food industry, 70 percent of the world’s food is grown by families, peasants, and Indigenous farmers. We are those people, and today when we return to our farms and our seeds, we take our place in history. In a time when agro-biodiversity has crashed and world food systems are filled with poisons, our seeds remain, and they return. These are our stories: stories of love and stories of hope.

If 70 percent of the world's food is grown outside the corporate food industry, and, in the US, most family farmers depend on outside income to survive, could this not be one of the most egregious failures of our current capitalist system, our political system, and our agricultural economy? Are we not adding upper stories to a shaky house of cards? Are we but arguing about what color to paint the deck chairs on the Titanic, before we rearrange them? Isn't our entire food system leaving us in a potentially very vulnerable position vis a vis our food security? You might want to think about these questions between now and November 2020.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.