Who Will Be Our Future Farmers?

Some articles I run across touch on so many issues I’m thinking about simultaneously, that it seems like I wrote the article myself. Although mine would usually not be as good. The latest example is a post by Sharon Astyk on the approaching crisis of not having a enough farmers. Astyk is also the author or co-author of several books on sustainable agriculture, most notably “A Nation of Farmers.” Please read her whole article, you will be glad you did. And the good news is it’s Part One of a Four-part series.

The synopsis is that the steady decline in the number of farmers, here in the U.S. as well as the rest of the world, is the harbinger of a huge disaster. She points out that the dangerously dwindling numbers of new farmers, as percentages of the population, have dropped to levels that are unprecedented since the dawn of agriculture over 10,000 years ago. She discusses some of the common reasons for the decline, such as the low social esteem to which farming is held in the U.S., including by farmers themselves. She also discusses the industrialization of agriculture as both a cause and an effect of the decline.

The biggest problem she focuses on is the transfer of knowledge and skills—it is simply not happening anymore, as farmers’ children decide not to carry on the profession. So even if someone does decide to go into farming, how will they learn how to do it?

This skills issue made me think of one of my recent posts about the FamilyFarmed Expo in Chicago in March. In that post I focused on the attraction of some of the well-known keynote speakers, as well as a few celeb chefs doing demos. But in light of the issues raised by Astyk’s article, it seems like the real value is in the educational sessions that get into issues like finance, marketing, and just getting started in farming. I know there are other agriculture conferences and expos around North America, but FamilyFarmed is the one I’m most familiar with. If you know of other ones, please leave some info in a comment.

Astyk’s article also triggered a fresh association with the obnoxious Atlantic article by the insufferable Caitlin Flanagan groundlessly bashing Alice Waters and the Edible School garden program, and by extension all similar school garden programs. Astyk makes the important point that coming from a gardening family or otherwise being exposed to it in childhood can prepare some of the needed farmers of the future. There were many great rebuttals to the Flanagan article, but my three favorite slap-downs are Jill’s, this one by Kurt Michael Friese on Grist and Andrew Leonard’s on Salon.com.

Those of us who are committed to buying locally-grown and produced food —that is, those of us on the ‘demand side’—sometimes have to explain why. When asked, I usually break it down to two reasons: 1) the food is simply better in every way; and 2) I feel that it is important to create a market so that farmers will be encouraged to make the extensive investments in both capital and their lives to allow the ’supply side’ to expand. I also firmly believe in the many other common reasons that people frequently give to that question, namely the slowing down and eventual reversal of the destruction wrought by industrial food production. But those larger issues usually require more than a quick elevator pitch.

Any programs or resources that provide potential farmers the knowledge and skills necessary to take up that difficult profession should be vigorously supported.