Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture

5. Rediscovering Agriculture and New Hope for Farming

63 Rediscovering Agriculture and New Hope for Farming Things are not going well in agriculture. In fact, farming is in crisis. People will continue to eat and someone will continue to produce their food, but farming, at least as we have known it, is coming to an end. As agricultural production becomes increasingly specialized and standardized, decision making is becoming centralized among a handful of large agribusiness corporations. As farms continue to become larger in size, fewer in number, and increasingly under the control of these large corporations, at some point farming is no longer farming, but instead becomes agribusiness management. Farming is associated with agriculture, not agribusiness. If farming is to survive as an occupation, we must rediscover agriculture. So what’s the difference between a farm and an agribusiness, and why does it matter? First, farmers historically have worked with nature. They attempted to tip the ecological balance to favor humans relative to other species, but they still worked with nature. Farmers recognized that the laws of nature must prevail over human laws. Farmers depended on unpredictable weather and worked with living systems that they could never expect to completely control. Farming always was as much a way of life as a way to make a living. A farm was a good place to raise a family and farming was a good way to be a part of a community. The benefits of farming were never solely, or even predominantly, economic in nature. Farming carried with it a set of beliefs, behaviors, and customs that distinguished it from any other occupation. It was the culture in agriculture that made a farm a farm and not an agribusiness. Certainly most farmers have had times when they wished 5 64 New Hope they could control the weather and times when they longed to be more independent. If they could gain more control they could reduce risks, improve production, and make their farms more profitable. It always seemed easier to achieve the social and ethical rewards of farming than to keep pace with other occupations in terms of income and return on investment. Down deep, most farmers probably knew that if they were to succeed in achieving independence and control, they would lose some of the things they valued most about farming. But little did they realize they would lose the ability to continue being farmers. As new technologies gave producers more control over production—commercial fertilizers, pesticides, livestock con- finement, and now biotechnology—they took the physical culture out of agriculture. As new farming methods made farmers more independent—mechanization, hired labor, and financial leverage—they took the social culture out of agriculture. As humans gained control over nature, they took the spiritual culture out of farming. As farmers took the culture out of farming, they transformed agriculture into agribusiness. As new technologies and methods succeeded in freeing farming from the constraints of nature, community, and morality, agricultural production became attractive to corporate investors . Corporations place no value on working in harmony with nature; instead, they must control nature to reduce risks and to ensure profitability and growth. Corporations place no value on relationships within families, communities, or nations; instead , they must separate people because people must compete to ensure that each produces to their full economic potential. When management becomes separated from ownership, the corporation takes on a “life” of its own. The people who choose to work for corporations may be ethical and moral people, but they are powerless to change the fundamental nature of the corporations for which they work. The only things a corporation can possibly value are profits and growth. Crisis is chronic in agriculture, but the current crisis is differ- Rediscovering Agriculture 65 ent. This crisis will not simply continue the trend toward larger and fewer farms, but instead will complete the transformation of agriculture into an industry. The agribusiness corporations today seem to be using the poultry industry as their model. The poultry industry is controlled by a handful of giant corporations that control everything from the genetics for breeding stock through feeding, processing, packaging, and delivery to retail outlets. A few giant multinational corporations eventually may control each commodity sector of agriculture, giving them the ability to stabilize production at levels that maximize profits for their corporate stockholders. Consumers will become nothing more than faceless markets to be exploited and farmers little more than corporate hired...