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In recent weeks most, if not all of the major farm publications, and many of the same publication editorials, have been expressing dismay at the apparent growing disconnect between agriculture and the consuming public. "A major concern is the growing disconnect between agriculture and the rest of the nation, be that elected officials or ordinary consumers," wrote Staff Writer Dick Hagen in the March 12 issue of The Land.
The cause for this concern certainly is not from a lack of abundant, safe food. There appears to not be any lack of agriculture engineering and advanced technology.
Perhaps it boils down to the simple fact that there are just a lot fewer farms, with fewer farmers responsible for the day-to-day decisions involved in making our food production system function; just a whole lot fewer people connected directly with the actual hands-on production of raw food material; and perhaps the reality that financial barriers for new entrants into farming continue to grow.
In 2002, 144,000 U.S. farms produced 75 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production. In 2007, according to the census of agriculture, the number of farms that produced that same share of production declined to 125,000.
At some point these numbers begin to impact the supporting cultures and businesses, and the children who are part of our social structure. These numbers begin to define lost opportunities for children to foster an attachment to the land. In the book "Last Child in the Woods," Richard Louv writes "... Passion does not arrive on video tape or on a CD; passion is personal. Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along the grass-stained sleeves to the heart."
Might these numbers be translating into fewer of the consuming public maintaining awareness of the connection of their food to the land and ultimately to the farmer? It becomes more and more a reality to them that food comes from the supermarket because that is as intimate as they can become with the raw products and how food is actually grown. The public sees less and less livestock on fewer and fewer farms on the land. In Minnesota they see mostly corn and soybeans, and then only a few months of the year. Today 30-year-olds and younger are encountering dwindling connections to grandparents, parents or siblings who are actually on the land, so how are they as parents to teach their children where food comes from?
On March 16, Minneapolis Star-Tribune blogger Liza Schwab wrote: "... we aren't teaching them (our children) how to make their own home-cooked meals ... Everything comes from a box ... Our children and many of us parents don't know how to read labels, we don't grow (any of) our own food in our backyard gardens any more, and sadly, many children don't even know what a tomato or green pepper looks like! Our children don't know raspberries come from bushes, carrots grow in the ground and tomatoes grow on a vine."
School district consolidation or four-day weeks may be the solution for keeping rural schools open, but budget cuts many times force the elimination of agriculture as part of the curriculum. Can we expect our education systems to address this growing disconnect when, even though many of these districts are consolidating to survive, they, their faculty and student bodies are becoming less connected to the rural communities and farms that many of their alumni grew up on?
Many of these students no longer see or understand farms; they see corn fields or soybean fields or large long buildings. Most of them will never step foot on a farm, much less have any opportunity to work on a farm. Even farm kids themselves spend significantly more time away from the farm because of the labor-saving technology or larger equipment and confinement livestock production. "Humans seldom value what they cannot name," wrote biologist Elaine Brooks in "Last Child in the Woods."
Too many people don't see crops as food. They see corn as ethanol. They understand soybeans to be a livestock feed. Farming is perceived by many, including most farmers, as an industry that produces commodities. Just ask any farmer sitting in a tractor or combine cab listening for the latest quotes. Corn or soybeans or wheat have become another commodity to be traded like gold, oil or stocks.
Even we as farmers are becoming less connected to our work. We hire the consultant, broker and custom operator. We hire people to manage our barns, or to run our tractors or apply our chemicals because it is more efficient based on economies of scale. By so doing we continue to deny more and more people the opportunity to be decision makers involved in hands-on food growing. Perhaps we in agriculture need to reexamine our goals for agriculture; reevaluate our domestic food production system. Perhaps it is our current drive toward greater and greater economic efficiency that is in fact driving a wedge between us and our non-farmer consumer.
Are there serious negative externalities to the single-factor analysis of efficiency? Have we lost sight of social capital? Maybe it is our preoccupation with exports and feeding the world that is in reality severing our lifeline with people here in our own back yards.
The temptation for many of us might be to say that all of these concerns are admirable and noble, but in the end feeding the world is our patriotic duty. Are we feeding the world today? Perhaps we need to move away from that mantra as there may be a credibility issue in this argument given the continued growth of hunger, worldwide and domestic.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that in 2008, of the 49.1 million people living in food-insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).
According to a June 19, 2009, news release from the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, 1.02 billion people worldwide do not have enough to eat; that's more than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
An interesting set of statistics from ag economist Max Runge: "In terms of our overall income, the percentage of what we spend on food has gone down tremendously in the last 80 years. Some 80 years ago, we were spending slightly less than 20 percent of our income on food, while today that has been reduced to less than 7 percent."
Would it be safe to say that the less we invest in something the less valuable it becomes to us?
Profitability, although most critical in the commerce equation, may need to be viewed from a more inclusive perspective. Too often we as farmers, ag economists and farm writers assume that the farmer is the only person who determines the profitability of the agriculture sector. Maybe we need to engage the thought processes of a broader base of people through more integrated, hands-on food production system structures.
Let me conclude with a few thoughts from Professor David Orr. He comments that a sane society "would have more parks and fewer shopping malls; more small farms and fewer agribusinesses; more prosperous small towns and smaller cities; more solar collectors and fewer strip mines; more bicycle trails and fewer freeways; more trains and fewer cars; more celebration and less hurry ..."
Utopia? No, says Orr, in concurrence with Louv: "We have tried utopia and can no longer afford it."
If we as eaters insist on food being a smaller and smaller percentage of our spendable income by continuing to separate ourselves from the source of that food, it will become a race to the bottom for agriculture, for rural communities, and for everyone's quality of life. We will almost surely guarantee future generations truly believing that food comes from the grocery store and not from the farm.
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This commentary was submitted by Carmen Fernholz of Madison.
