Get Big? Get Out! agriculture as if people mattered.

The current Secretary of Agriculture has questioned the survivability of "small dairy farms." He also paraphrased a former secretary of agriculture who was noted for telling farmers to "get big or get out!" There are a number of those who are heavily involved in agriculture who I believe have a more relevant approach that supports sustaining not only the profit model of global, factory farm, agriculture, but the health and well-being of both farmers and those who purchase and prepare their products. Here's a partial listing of those I believe  are more credible and wiser than "Secretary Sonny."

does the world really need more corn?

Photo by J. Harrington

Almost anyone who has delivered one of the annual Schumacher lectures, but especially:

• Wes Jackson


• Wendell Berry


• Anna Lappe, and


• Winona LaDuke

E.F. Schumacher is the author of Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. The implicit and explicit criticism of perpetual growth economics ("bigger is better") recognizes several factors I'll bet Secretary Sonny ignores. First, there is such a thing as diseconomies of scale, especially since perpetual growth on a finite planet is illogical and impossible. Second, externalities are like karma. Eventually they catch up with you. Take a look at the algae in Lake Erie, check the nitrate levels in Iowa drinking water, and track the expansion of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico as classic examples of what's wrong with perpetual growth agriculture.

or is renewable energy a better use of some land?

Photo by J. Harrington

If you'd like alternative examples of what happens when the capitalistic, global "get big" model becomes dominant, watch the growth of insulin prices, medical bills, and how "Big Pharma" is profiteering at the expense of our health. Can you explain to me how Big Pharma and Big Ag differ in their business practices? Do you remember the fairy tale of the sorcerer's apprentice?

We have, for a long time, advocated for local food and local economies. We firmly believe that it's up to something like 99% of us to figure out and help make local, human scale agriculture work. In addition to the wise folks we've mentioned above, there are Aldo Leopold and his land ethic, Elinor Ostrum and her Nobel Prize for teaching us how to manage the commons, and Kate Raworth, who is trying to teach us how to think like a 21st century economist. There's a different kind of "new normal" that's been developed while most attention has been on the new, bigger, better world we can no longer support. We've broken the climate and are making a number of other life support systems dysfunctional. To paraphrase a former POTUS, "If you're not for us, you're against us." In this case, however, the us is all of us on planet earth.

The Farm

By Joyce Sutphen

My father’s farm is an apple blossomer.

He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet

and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose

and the jack-in-the-pulpits.

His sleek cows ripple in the pastures.

The dog and purple iris

keep watch at the garden’s end.

His farm is rolling thunder,

a lightning bolt on the horizon.

His crops suck rain from the sky

and swallow the smoldering sun.

His fields are oceans of heat,

where waves of gold

beat the burning shore.

A red fox

pauses under the birch trees,

a shadow is in the river’s bend.

When the hawk circles the land,

my father’s grainfields whirl beneath it.

Owls gather together to sing in his woods,

and the deer run his golden meadow.

My father’s farm is an icicle,

a hillside of white powder.

He parts the snowy sea,

and smooths away the valleys.

He cultivates his rows of starlight

and drags the crescent moon

through dark unfurrowed fields.

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