The Changing Face of Farming

In the Winter of the year is a good time to assess the changing face of farming. The trees and shrubs have lost their foliage and farmsteads are visible to the passerby on the roads. Increasingly, more homesteads are present in rural areas, but less have equipment sheds big enough to house anything more than a lawnmower or hobby tractor. Increasingly, old homesteads have barns which are leaning or being taken down, indicating fewer farmers are tending to animals as a part of their operations. Increasingly, all that is left of old rural homesteads is a few trees clumped together at the end of a road, far back from the highway, while new homes appear in close proximity to major thoroughfares.

Many want to live in the country, few want to be rural. Many want to have their own space, few want to be very isolated from civilization. Many want to remember the farming roots of their family, few want to engage in that kind of work. For all of the romantic notions that exist about 'having a place in the country', few want . . . or can afford to make their living in the country, so today approximately 1% of the American population strives to feed everyone else. That, my friends, is a true minority. And, the changing face of farming is reflecting the strain.

As I drive along our rural highways, I wonder: How many more 'country homes' will be allowed to be built by folks who have no stake in rural living, other than removing a few more acres from active food production? How many more farm families will be displaced by subdivisions and cash payouts for acreage which will disappear under the cold darkness of asphalt and concrete? How far will we be able to stretch the American farmer's ability to produce, while at the same time exponentially reducing the number of available acres on which to produce the very food we need? How much are people really willing to spend to live in the country?

As the face of farming changes in rural Amercia, I suspect we will find the answers to many of those questions as the price of agricultural goods goes up in correlation to declining supplies of available acreage on which to grow them. I suspect, if not in our generation, then in our children's generation, the economy of greed and atmosphere of personal gratification is going to come face-to-face with the reality of not having enough to feed all of the non-farming families. Then, whose 'inalienable rights' will be on the chopping block? Those who take the risk and expend the dollars and energy to produce the food the world needs in order to exist? Or, the those who hunger for that which they do not labor . . . and thirst for the water which they do not draw?

One percent versus more than ninety-nine percent . . . the odds are not in favor of the minority. Maybe that is why the sacredness of the rural landscape is already being sacrificed on the altar of self-righteousness. Sound bitter or sardonic? It's not . . . it is realistic. Take a look around as you drive through the new subdivisions in your area - and imagine the crops which will never grow on those lands again.

Not unlike the Native Americans before them, the American farmer is rapidly disappearing. They are holding on by the fingertips, trying to exercise their right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, tilling the soil that all may eat, while the vast majority of the American public shoots the last of the buffalo, exercises eminent domain in acquiring properties for 'progress', and expedites corporate growth with tax advantages at the expense of the very individuals who represent, congressionally and legally, little more than a bump on the rural road. I pray for the children who will inevitably inherit the folly of our 'right' to own our personal space in the world, without having to have a plan in place of how to serve or feed anyone but ourselves at the table of God's gracious abundance.

The face of farming is changing rapidly and I wonder how long we will be able to view that changing face before we are forced to look away in shame. Farmers, the ones who purchase everything retail, sell their product wholesale . . . and we who expect everything at wholesale prices are retailing our future to the highest bidders, including the very soil needed to grow the stuff of substance for life. Such scenery is not the prettiest I have seen in my travels, but it is the truth of our existence on display before our eyes. I hope we have the stomach to see the changes which are happening, and the heart to change what is happening before our stomachs are starving.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don