The Decline of the Small Family Farm

The author of a book review at the link below is Verlyn Klinkenborg who is a non fiction writer who has published widely on the subject of farming. He teaches creative writing at Yale and owns a small farm in upstate New York.

He reviews four recent books focusing on the changing nature of American farming.

As a kid my brothers and I on occasion worked as summer farm hands  specifically to help in harvesting straw and hay, both stacking the wagon trailing behind the bailer in the fields and then back in the barn stacking  the mow. The bails were a big as we were as we struck and sunk a steel hook into each one and dragged it away from the mobile elevator often stumbling awkwardly into any openings between bails under foot. We would pull each bail up at one end gripping with both hands the two tight bands of twine to get a knee under in order to flip it up and over the edge of an elevated bale.  If there was moisture in the bale then it could weigh much more than those that were dried. Througout this effort there was the farmers frantic call to rush, to get all those bails in as soon as possible before the rain came. Later when I had just finished high school I worked full time for 3 weeks  managing a small 18 cow Holstein dairy farm while the elderly farmer and his wife went on vacation. One by one all the small farms around those parts were getting out of dairy and mixed farming and leasing their land to large agri-biz outfits who used the land to grow a limited selection of crops on a massive scale. Both the family farms I mention here were among those that auctioned off their herds and equipment and leased their lands to others. One still can drive through these rural areas and see many of the original farm houses but the farmers are no longer working the land for a living, they may have a generous vegtable garden and a small tractor but they have day jobs elsewhere. My memories of farming are tinged with some nostalgia, one day when I finished milking the herd and was cleaning up the stable I  found myself standing and watching a dark bank of rain clouds grandly sweeping across the fields in the distance slowly swelling and rolling towards me flashing lightening and then deep rumbles of thunder until the sky over the barn was completely covered. The rain poured down on the barn and instantly rivelets of water fomed in the barnyard like serpents carrying away the runoff. No views like this back in town I can tell you. I relished this perspective, something I had never imagined experiencing.  I also remember the eyes of the cows, calves, pigs and the family herding dog and the scruffy barn cats as I fed them and feeling their affection and trust towards me, a stranger. Many of the kids I went to school with grew up on farms and they would tell me how hard it was to make ends meet. Farm kids, boys and girls, were mostly quiet, pragmatic and strongminded and school yard bully’s steered clear of them. They were a breed apart who felt sorry for us ‘townies’ because we were missing so much in life. Even so the writing was on the wall and only a very few would end up staying on the farm themselves later on.

If small family farms are the canary in the coal mine for where things have gone and are going then the big picture looks pretty scary in a world of increasing capitalist centralization of production and ownership of the land  by investor cartels because with this come the inevitable degradation to the soil, the genetic engineering and mono crops and finally the the relentless mechanized factory conditions for the mass production of animals.