Response to Farm Bureau "Call to Arms"

Don’t disparage 40 acres and a mule

American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman (Call to arms – Capital Press Jan 15, 2010) seeks to draw a line between “consumers” and “extremists” who would “drag agriculture back to the days of 40 acres and a mule.”

Today’s agriculture has done a remarkable job of creating large amounts of cheap food at a low price. By some other yardsticks, we do not fare so well.

Our energy balance is negative. It takes ten calories of energy to make one calorie of food. That cannot be sustained.

Our vegetables are, for the most part, less nutritious than they were a century ago.

Our farms rarely support us, except maybe at the largest scale. Bigger machines and fewer people means collapsing rural communities. It means more energy dependence, and less people on the land. People on the land are essential to national security and the ability to survive calamity.

So it looks to me like the comparison between modern agriculture and the guy with the mule is about a wash. Both have advantages, both have something to teach the other, and both are probably necessary to both feed the world and to care for it’s inhabitants.

There is a more important divide than the one between “modern farmer” and “40 acres and a mule”, and this is one that the Farm Bureau would like to brush over. That is the divide between the farmer and the agro-industrialist. The farmer cares for his land. The farmer is husbandman to his livestock and to his crops. He will ask “is my soil better or worse than it was a few years ago ?” and “ are my animals healthy or merely surviving ?” The agro-industrialist sees his farm simply as a factory, mixing biological inputs (plants and animals) with chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, additives, fuel, etc.) to create outputs of commodities.

Mr. Stallman says the farmers and the agro-industrialists need to stand united against the environmentalists, foodies, animal rightists, and it seems, often consumers. I am not so sure this is where the farmer’s interests lie. Farmers have been, and can be, the best of environmentalists. It is only since WW II that the farm-as-factory model has taken hold. Humans have been farming for thousands of years. Farmers care about their animals. They want them to be healthy and to live as comfortable a life as possible up until they give their lives to feed us. Farmers want the crops they harvest to be of the best possible quality. I think the Farm Bureau should recognize that everyone who buys groceries is a legitimate stakeholder and is also a potential ally.

Jonathan Spero

Jonathan Spero tends 4 acres of vegetable seed crops and a couple of steers in Southern Oregon.