Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | We cannot turn back the clock 50 years and say everything was better then. You cannot say todays farms are exploitive. You cannot blame the problems on the farmer or the faceless corperation. And, you cannot say if we retailed all our products we would be better off. Now let me expand on these 4 points.
You could say that everything was better 50 years ago, but was it. 50 bushels was a big corn crop. If your dairy cow produced 5000 pounds she was a record holder. Hogs on dirt lots. The list goes on and on. But as time has progressed, we have moved beyond that stage. Land and animals now are much more productive on less. Enviromentally land is in much better shape now. We aren't trying to clear every acre anymore. Our equipment is much better now. How many people want to go back to plowing with a Farmall M rather than the comfor of a more modern tractor. Sure there were more farmers then than now, but that is a rural issue, not an agricultural issue. How many small service stations are left in your county that are not corporation owned.
Farmers today are not exploitive. You dont see near as much soil erosion anymore. Our crops grow more abundently now, allowing prices to stay low. We dont have livestock running through streams at will polluting them. I dont hear any farmer out there trying to intentionally gouge anyone. If anything we let ourselves get took more often. We are out providing our services to the public. They have stated their demand and we are simply providing the service the best way we know.
Farmers and corporations are not responsible for health problems. Consumers made the choice to eat what we do. Corporation just responded to the demand by the consumer for a quick meal or a quick snack. That the consumer reached for a candy bar instead of a apple, or had more cake instead of vegetables for dinner, and then didn't work off those extra calories is no fault of the farmer or the corporation. They were simply responding to demand. That the consumer didn't know their limits, that is their own fault. They may want to blame it on someone else, but in the end, it was their choice. No one forced it upon them.
All farmers couldn't retail and make a profit. A select few can, rather it is by having a different product, or having a product they can tell their own story about. However, it doesn't take long before that niche is saturated, and then you are left with the fact that you have the product and not the market. You have the regulations involved. You have marketing involved. Labor, supply chains, the list goes on and on. Some of us don't have the time, some of us don't have the money, and the rest don't have the inclination. For those that do, there is money to be made, and there is money to be lost. It all sounds good in theroy, but when theroy meets reality, very little if any is relevant anymore. From the people I have talked to, yes you can do it, but it will take more time, more money, you will be much more involved, and you need to run a tight ship before you ever think about it. It is much easier to have the idea than the reality.
Now just think, if we went back 50 years, there would be no way agriculture could support the worlds population. Many more people would have to work in agriculture to sustain ourselves. Just think how incredibly wasteful agriculture practice were then and compared to now. We would need much more of everything to produce less. This isn't a Norman Rockwell painting. Agriculture has evolved the way it has evolved because it was demanded of us by consumers. They said we want more and we want to pay less. Farmers as a whole bowed to this need. We only did what was asked. |
The unsugared reality of agriculture today
