Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Disappearing Act

After a long and intentional time away from blogdom, I post this.


Part of the purpose of this blog was to express modern ag issues and highlights. So this post will follow suit.
The 'family farm' is disappearing. Not really a debate unless you disagree on what the term 'family farm' means. Many, if not all, blame technology on this disappeance, but I think that arguement is trivial and superficial.
First, because 'nonfamily farms' don't have the corner on technology. It's accessible to everybody. Tractors, milking equipment, refrigeration, cell phones, computers, and software are only quick examples of on-farm technology.
The REAL issue with the disappearance of 'family farms' is...hold your hat...kids don't want to farm! I know that's quite revolutionary, but bear with me. Like any business, if little Billy doesn't want to own a widget factory, he'll find something else to do. The failure then to keep farms is with farmers themselves, not politcians, bankers, coops, inspectors, or anyone else you can gripe to. To blame technology is like stating that my car ran out of gas, not becuase I didn't fill it up, but because there wasn't a gas station right where I stalled.

Inevitiably when someone says 'family farm' we all think of bib overalls and 20 or 30 cows; farming the old fashion way (whatever that is). Why can't a family farm be 200 cows? or 3000? Really, what's at odds here? If you think about it objectively, nothing is contrary. Unless we accuse Job of not being a 'family farmer' with 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, and 1,000 donkeys. In my opinion family farming has become a buzz word at best and an idol at worst.

3 comments:

trawlerman said...

Did I make you a copy of the Doug Jones lecture, "Antithesis in Childrearing"? I'm pretty sure I did.

It's funny, you know. I could have inherited a landscaping company on Long Island. (I would be in 200% better physical shape if I had). I enjoyed landscaping, I was pretty good at it (though I need to learn much more about the planting side of things).

Yet the reason my father worked so hard with his landscaping business was so that I would not inherit it, but rather have a job in an air-conditioned building somwhere.

My grandfather was a bricklayer.
My father is a landscaper.
I am a librarian-in-training.

Scott M Terry said...

Matt

Why can't a 3,000 cow dairy be a family farm, or a 50,000 egg factory? They aren't family friendly for one thing. Would you send a 10 year old out to make sure the conveyors and augers were working? If kids are not involved in the everyday work they will find other things of interest before they are even allowed to help on the "family business". Thats why kids are leaving farms. In this case low tech is better if you want multigenerational family farms. No one is argueing that technology in of itself is bad. I do believe we should pick and choose what technology is healthy for our culture and what is not. Just becouse the industrial model is newer does not make it better. If any one is making idols, it is the indstrial ag supporters. I suppose people that thought it was a bad idea to feed cattle cooked up cow brains were made fun of becouse they wouldn't bow down to the latest innovation in cattle feeding. You know where that got us.

Matt said...

Naturally, we agree on this:

"If kids are not involved in the everyday work they will find other things of interest before they are even allowed to help on the "family business"."

And that's what this post addresses. But I'm not sure I completely understand your position.
Hear me out.
If the scriptures say that Job had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, and 1,000 donkeys, to you is he a Christian Agrarian?
If you say 'yes' than you believe technology (mechnization) is inversely related to agrarianism. If you say 'no' then agrarianism must be directly related to farm size.
I'm sure Job's kids were involved in 'running the farm'. However, that can happen on a number of different levels.

"Just because the industrial model is newer does not make it better."

If I understand you correctly when you say 'new industrial model' to mean capitialism, I would argue that it's not new. It was only inevitable that the dairy business would go the way of chicken, hogs, and eggs. But that type of efficiency mindset is what's behind all of agriculture, it's impossible to escape. Just because greed overtakes a segment of large dairyherd owners that doesn't mean that their isn't greedy small dairies.

Dairymen generate a product and they do their best to make a profit via cost control. That applies to your farm in the same way that it does on a 10,000 cow dairy.