I’m doing something a little different with this week’s post, with a focus on farmers. If there’s a theme to this blog, it’s probably a combination of think for yourself, be as independent as you can and don’t believe everything (more like don’t believe anything) the “experts” tell you. I’ve ranted about growing your own food, buying local, being frugal and so on for nine years now. This time, I want to bring some other voices to the narrative. There’s good news and bad.
In The Company Store, Chris Martenson talks about how farmers are in much the same situation as the laborers in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s rendition of Sixteen Tons. Martenson is a scientist (his PhD is in neurotoxicology), an economic researcher and futurist who specializes in energy and resource depletion. He puts his money where his mouth is: from VP of an international Fortune 300 company to a modest homestead in the Northeast where he grows a garden, homeschools his kids and works hard on building community and relationships. The Company Store explains much of what is wrong with farming in the US today.
The second link is to Civil Eats, for an article entitled Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us? It adds some additional data and fleshes out more of what Martenson is talking about.
The third link is a National Geographic article, Why We Need Small Farms (which, by the way, produce 70 percent of the food in the world).
Last but certainly not least are links to the website of Singing Frogs Farm and Throwback at Trapper Creek. Elizabeth and Paul Kaiser started Singing Frogs Farm in 2007. They are a great model of how it can be done. Nita Wilton is a third-generation farmer who went from conventional to grass-based farming. She’s too far away to be an actual mentor, but I’ve learned a lot from her. She’s another great example of how you can make it work.
I hope that you will check out these articles/blogs and that they will spur your thoughts and your actions to help make things better for us all.
