Got Big? Get Out!

We live near the southern end of Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, there were 10,004 farms totaling 2,030,003 acres for an average farm size of 203 acres. The net cash farm income was $187,823,000, which averages slightly less than $20,000 per farm. Only 1% of the farms were organic and only 9% sold directly to consumers. The former is comparable with the sate average while the latter is almost double the state average. And yet, we hear or read infrequently about farming activity, or its importance, in this Congressional District, especially when compared to mining. Does farming also have to become an extractive industry for us to pay attention? Has it reached that level already?

hay and pastures are a significant land use

Photo by J. Harrington

We just came across some tables providing agricultural census data by watershed, including a data set for the St. Croix, covering both the Minnesota and Wisconsin sides. Of note, there are only about 6,000 farms in the St. Croix watershed, compared to the 10,000 in MNCD8. Comparisons may well be challenging except on the basis of percentages or relative amount. For example, the 1% of the watershed cropland in no till is comparable to the 1% of the CD farms that were organic. We'll be spending time trying to decide how much of the data results in useful information to support the importance of local food systems.

abandoned homestead on a working farm

Photo by J. Harrington

We're starting to poke around the Census of Agriculture because we have a growing suspicion that in terms of daily life and politics, food is going to become a significant issue. It's past time to repudiate Secretary Butz' advice. Our too big industrial agriculture system is failing us.

“The Man Born to Farming”

by Wendell Berry

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?

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