I wish more people understood that there are a whole lot of things farmers would like to do but won’t because either the market or the regulatory burden is set up to put those farmers at risk of losing their farms. They simply won’t take that risk unless they are already about to lose their farms anyway.
I see a lot of hate directed at farmers for unsustainable practices that harm the environment and public health with erosion, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers, etc...
Environmental activists, Image courtesy ACLU
Be sure the farmer knows all too well what’s going on, probably a fair bit more than you do. But are you going to the auction when he loses his farm and buying all his land and equipment at fire sale and giving it back to him? No You Are Not. But if the farmer uses USDA-approved GAP on a crop approved for insurance subsidies, when that crop failure hits, or that market crashes, or that hurricane floods the whole state, he at least breaks even and can try again next year.
If you really want change, then the simple fact is that the infrastructure must be built to support that change. This is the real reason most organic food is more expensive. Even if it is cheaper to grow or raise, it ends up more at the grocery because the industrialized system is not at all required to support them. In most cases they wouldn’t even allow any competition to use their infrastructure at all and would lobby government to prevent building that infrastructure.
If you don’t believe me, just try raising 10,000 organic free range chickens in mobile cages and then go to the Tyson processing plant and see how far you get… :P Then when Tyson laughs at your face for even asking, try butchering them yourself and see how fast the Feds show up with guns drawn.
Your only option is to pack em up and send them 1/2 way across the country and HOPE the less than 3% processing capacity isn’t backed up with every other independent farmers production at the time. This is because the majority of States don’t even have ANY processing facilities at all that are not owned by the top 4 industrial producers.
And why did all the tomatoes become terrible since the late 70’s early 80’s? That’s when all the major canning facilities up and moved from the Midwest to California. Indiana farmers certainly knew how to grow tomatoes, but you can’t ship anything but green tomatoes cross country. Vine ripened ones will become mush. So those farmers had no choice but to start growing corn instead. And small Midwest integrated crop, pork, chicken, turkey and/or beef farmers trying to hold out when the local abattoirs all folded due to massive regulations and government manipulation of markets, they had to switch to corn too.
Rebuilding the local food infrastructure would reduce the cost to high quality local sustainably raised food while costing little to nothing at all actually. In some cases all it requires is that the federal government stop trying to micromanage agriculture with overbearing regulatory burden from afar. In other cases it might require some initial investment, like building local processing capacity, but an investment that could be stand alone profitable in its own right. And in yet still more cases all it would take is zoning reform!
People just don’t understand that farmers farm the way they do because the government/industry wants it to be this way. Read more about it here:
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
If you want change, (and certainly I do, I have advocated change with every post here I make) you have to help build the infrastructure that is required to support that change. It’s just a simple fact. Stop blaming the farmers. They know all too well and a whole lot more than you do. But they absolutely will not risk the farm walking out on a limb without support. You wouldn’t either, and if you did, most likely someone else will be farming your land in no time.
I am an organic farmer. I am not afraid of change. I am the change.
Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War Elephant
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