We sing from the same choir book!
FAMILY FARMS VERSUS CORPORATE FARMS
I boiled these thoughts down from an economics paper that I wrote in the 1960s when I attended a college in Kansas. I was raised just outside NYC and the contrast to small Kansas farms provoked the following thoughts after interviewing some owners of small farms in Kansas.
"I trust the small family farm to "grow" food rather than the large corporation to "produce" food. Who would I trust more? The farmer who steps outside his door on to his workplace which he monitors daily or the corporate executive, who has never seen the farm from his corporate office nor cares to see it?
The family farmer's farm is diverse thus spreading risk over many crops; the corporate farm is often mono or one crop, growing in petrol-chemicals, and subjected to increased risk of a one crop failure.
Who plants the hedgerows to protect the soil, beauty, productivity, and biodiversity to protect the bees, birds and butterflies of a property? That would be the family farmer.
Who supplies the local farmer's market? Right, that would be the family farmer; less transportation cost, fresher recently harvested food, and this approach lends to the security of the country's food supply!" -ES
Mark my word, we will be returning to our agrarian past. We were waylaid by "progress" which has turned into "regress" in terms of our living arrangement with nature, water, soil, bees, birds, butterflies....and more.
