Small farming is the future

…I decided years ago that I didn’t want my farming operation to get bigger. I liked milking 45 cows, raising their feed and doing a little direct marketing. I liked being small.

“Hopelessly behind the times,” I was told. Local cheese makers were giving up, local meat processing was a thing of the past. Small farming was dead. The developing world couldn’t feed itself and needed industrial farming systems.


Who could argue with the Green Revolution? Until the current food crisis. It’s not so much a shortage of food, but a shortage of cheap food. The poor can’t afford to eat and the middle class feels the pinch. Why wasn’t industrial agriculture, farming fence row to fence row, feeding the world?

There’s the rub — feeding the world was never the intention. Back in the ’70s well-meaning researchers and eager graduate students, myself included, were convinced we could eliminate hunger in our lifetime. We had good intentions, but the big picture was always about making a profit.

Farmers, using cheap fuel, fertilizer and plenty of chemicals, could plant more acres, produce enough volume and generally make a profit. This, of course, benefited the seed and chemical companies, which long ago figured out that small farmers saving their own seed and tending small acreages didn’t spend much money.

Capital Times