Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food Read online

In order to achieve this with minimal public expense, we must control agricultural production; supply must be adjusted to demand. Obviously this is something that individual farmers, or individual states, cannot do for themselves; it is a job that belongs appropriately to the federal government. As a governmental function, it is perfectly in keeping with the ideal, everywhere implicit in the originating documents of our government, that the small have a right to certain protections from the great. We have, within limits that are obvious and reasonable, the right to be small farmers or small businessmen or -women, just as, or perhaps insofar as, we have a right to life, liberty, and prosperity. The individual citizen is not to be victimized by the rich any more than by the powerful. When Marty Strange writes, “To the extent that only the exceptional succeed, the system fails,”8 he is economically and agriculturally sound, but he is also speaking directly from American political tradition.

  The plight of the family farm would be improved also by other governmental changes—for example, in policies having to do with taxation and credit.

  Our political problem, of course, is that farmers are neither numerous enough nor rich enough to be optimistic about government help. The government tends, rather, to find their surplus production useful and their economic failure ideologically desirable. Thus, it seems to me that we must concentrate on those things that farmers and farming communities can do for themselves—striving in the meantime for policies that would be desirable.

  It may be that the gravest danger to farmers is their inclination to look to the government for help, after the agribusiness corporations and the universities (to which they have already looked) have failed them. In the process, they have forgotten how to look to themselves, to their farms, to their families, to their neighbors, and to their tradition.

  Marty Strange has written also of his belief “that commercial agriculture can survive within pluralistic American society, as we know it—if [my emphasis] the farm is rebuilt on some of the values with which it is popularly associated: conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community. To sustain itself, commercial agriculture will have to reorganize its social and economic structure as well as its technological base and production methods in a way that reinforces these values.”9 I agree. Those are the values that offer us survival, not just as farmers, but as human beings. And I would point out that the transformation that Marty is proposing cannot be accomplished by the governments, the corporations, or the universities; if it is to be done, the farmers themselves, their families, and their neighbors will have to do it.

  What I am proposing, in short, is that farmers find their way out of the gyp joint known as the industrial economy.

  The first item on the agenda, I suggest, is the remaking of the rural neighborhoods and communities. The decay or loss of these has demonstrated their value; we find, as we try to get along without them, that they are worth something to us—spiritually, socially, and economically. And we hear again the voices out of our cultural tradition telling us that to have community, people don’t need a “community center” or “recreational facilities” or any of the rest of the paraphernalia of “community improvement” that is always for sale. Instead, they need to love each other, trust each other, and help each other. That is hard. All of us know that no community is going to do those things easily or perfectly, and yet we know that there is more hope in that difficulty and imperfection than in all the neat instructions for getting big and getting rich that have come out of the universities and the agribusiness corporations in the past fifty years.

  Second, the farmers must look to their farms and consider the losses, human and economic, that may be implicit in the way those farms are structured and used. If they do that, many of them will understand how they have been cheated by the industrial orthodoxy of competition—how specialization has thrown them into competition with other farmer-specialists, how bigness of scale has thrown them into competition with neighbors and friends and family, how the consumer economy has thrown them into competition with themselves.

  If it is a fact that for any given farm there is a ratio between people and acres that is correct, there are also correct ratios between dependence and independence and between consumption and production. For a farm family, a certain degree of independence is possible and is desirable, but no farmer and no family can be entirely independent. A certain degree of dependence is inescapable; whether or not it is desirable is a question of who is helped by it. If a family removes its dependence from its neighbors—if, indeed, farmers remove their dependence from their families—and give it to the agribusiness corporations (and to moneylenders), the chances are, as we have seen, that the farmers and their families will not be greatly helped. This suggests that dependence on family and neighbors may constitute a very desirable kind of independence.

  It is clear, in the same way, that a farm and its family cannot be only productive; there must be some degree of consumption. This, also, is inescapable; whether or not it is desirable depends on the ratio. If the farm consumes too much in relation to what it produces, then the farm family is at the mercy of its suppliers and is exposed to dangers to which it need not be exposed. When, for instance, farmers farm on so large a scale that they cannot sell their labor without enormous consumption of equipment and supplies, then they are vulnerable. I talked to an Ohio farmer recently who cultivated his corn crop with a team of horses. He explained that, when he was plowing his corn, he was selling his labor and that of his team (labor fueled by the farm itself and, therefore, very cheap) rather than buying herbicides. His point was simply that there is a critical difference between buying and selling and that the name of this difference at the year’s end ought to be net gain.

  Similarly, when farmers let themselves be persuaded to buy their food instead of grow it, they become consumers instead of producers and lose a considerable income from their farms. This is simply to say that there is a domestic economy that is proper to the farming life and that it is different from the domestic economy of the industrial suburbs.

  FINALLY, I WANT to say that I have not been talking from speculation but from proof. I have had in mind throughout this essay the one example known to me of an American community of small family farmers who have not only survived but thrived during some very difficult years: I mean the Amish. I do not recommend, of course, that all farmers should become Amish, nor do I want to suggest that the Amish are perfect people or that their way of life is perfect. What I want to recommend are some Amish principles:1. They have preserved their families and communities.

  2. They have maintained the practices of neighborhood.

  3. They have maintained the domestic arts of kitchen and garden, household and homestead.

  4. They have limited their use of technology so as not to displace or alienate available human labor or available free sources of power (the sun, wind, water, and so on).

  5. They have limited their farms to a scale that is compatible both with the practice of neighborhood and with the optimum use of low-power technology.

  6. By the practices and limits already mentioned, they have limited their costs.

  7. They have educated their children to live at home and serve their communities.

  8. They esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline.

  These principles define a world to be lived in by human beings, not a world to be exploited by managers, stockholders, and experts.

  NOTES

  1 In conversation.

  2 Robert Heilbroner, “The Art of Work,” Occasional Paper of the Council of Scholars (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1984), p. 20.

  3 Eric Gill, A Holy Tradition of Working (Suffolk, England: Golgonooza Press, 1983), p. 61.

  4 Ibid., p. 65.

  5 William Safire, “Make That Six Deadly Sins—A Re-examination Shows Greed to Be a Virtue,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), 7 Jan. 1986.

  6 In conversation.

  7 Hatch Act, United States Code
, Section 361b.

  8 Marty Strange, “The Economic Structure of a Sustainable Agriculture,” in Meeting the Expectations of the Land, ed. Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p. 118.

  9 Ibid., p. 116.

  Let the Farm Judge

  (1997)

  TO ME, ONE of the most informative books on agriculture is British Sheep, published by the National Sheep Association of Britain. This book contains photographs and descriptions of sixty-five British sheep breeds and “recognized half-breds.” I have spent a good deal of time looking at the pictures in this book and reading its breed descriptions, for think that it represents one of the great accomplishments of agriculture. It makes a most impressive case for the intelligence and the judgment of British farmers over many centuries.

  What does it mean that an island not much bigger than Kansas or not much more than twice the size of Kentucky should have developed sixty or so breeds of sheep? It means that many thousands of farmers were paying the most discriminating attention, not only to their sheep, but also to the nature of their local landscapes and economies, for a long time. They were responding intelligently to the requirement of local adaptation. The result, when such an effort is carried on by enough intelligent farmers in the same region for a long time, is the development of a distinct breed that fits regional needs. Such local adaptation is the most important requirement for agriculture, wherever it occurs. If you are going to adapt your farming to a variety of landscapes, you are going to need a variety of livestock breeds, and a variety of types within breeds.

  The great diversity of livestock breeds, along with the great diversity of domestic plant varieties, can be thought of as a sort of vocabulary with which we may make appropriate responses to the demands of a great diversity of localities. The goal of intelligent farmers, who desire the long-term success of farming, is to adapt their work to their places. Local adaptation always requires reasonably correct answers to two questions: What is the nature—the need and the opportunity—of the local economy? and, What is the nature of the place? For example, it is a mistake to answer the economic question by plowing too steep a hillside, just as it is a mistake to answer the geographic or ecological question in a way that denies the farmer a living.

  Intelligent livestock breeders may find that, in practice, the two questions become one: How can I produce the best meat at the lowest economic and ecological cost? This question cannot be satisfactorily answered by the market, by the meatpacking industry, by breed societies, or by show ring judges. It cannot be answered satisfactorily by “animal science” experts, or by genetic engineers. It can only be answered satisfactorily by the farmer, and only if the farm, the place itself, is allowed to play a part in the process of selection.

  It goes without saying that the animal finally produced by any farm will be a product to some extent of the judgment of the farmer, the meatpacker, the breed society, and the show ring judge. But the farm too must be permitted to make and enforce its judgment. If it is not permitted to do so, then there can be no local adaptation. And where there is no local adaptation, the farmer and the farm must pay significant penalties.

  In our era, because of commercial demand and the allure of the show ring, livestock breeding has tended to concentrate on the production of outstanding individual animals as determined by the ideal breed characteristics or the ideal carcass. In other words, a good brood cow or ewe is one that produces offspring that fit the prevailing show or commercial standards. We don’t worry enough about the cost of production, which would lead us directly to the issue of local adaptation. This sort of negligence, I think, could have been possible only in our time, when “cheap” fossil fuel has set the pattern in agriculture. Suffice it to say that much thoughtlessness in livestock breeding has been subsidized by large checks paid to veterinarians and drug companies, and covered over by fat made of allegedly cheap corn.

  Allegedly cheap fossil fuel, allegedly cheap transportation, and allegedly cheap corn and other feed grains have pushed agriculture toward uniformity, obscuring regional differences and, with them, the usefulness of locally adapted breeds, especially those that do well on forages. This is why there are now only a few dominant breeds, and why those breeds are large and grain-dependent. Now, for example, nearly all dairy cows are Holsteins, and the modern sheep is more than likely to have a black face and to be “big and tall.”

  My friend Maury Telleen has pointed out to me that fifty years ago the Ayrshire was a popular dairy cow in New England and Kansas. The reason was her ability to make milk on the feed that was locally available; she did not require the optimal conditions and feedstuffs of Iowa or Illinois. She was, Maury says, “a cow that could ‘get along.’ ” It is dangerous to assume that we have got beyond the need for farm animals that can “get along.”

  If we assume that the inescapable goal of the farmer, especially in the present economy, must be to reduce costs, and, further, that costs are reduced by local adaptation, then we can begin to think about the problems of livestock breeding by noting that corn, whatever its market price, is not cheap. What is cheap is grass—grazed grass—and where the grass grows determines the kind of animal needed to graze it.

  Our farm, in the lower Kentucky River valley, is mostly on hillsides. Heavy animals tend to damage hillsides, especially in winter. Our experience with brood cows showed us that our farm needs sheep. It needs, in addition, sheep that can make their living by grazing coarse pasture on hillsides. And so in the fall of 1978 we bought six Border Cheviot ewes and a buck. At present we have about thirty ewes, and eventually we will have more.

  Our choice of breed was a good one. The Border Cheviot is a hill sheep, developed to make good use of such rough pasture as we have. Moreover, it can make good use of a little corn, and our farm is capable of producing a little corn. There have been problems, of course. Some of them have had to do with adapting ourselves to our breed. These have been important, but just as important have been the problems of adapting our flock to our farm. And those are the problems I want to discuss.

  There are now probably more Cheviots in the Midwest than elsewhere in the United States. For us, at any rate, the inevitable source of breeding stock has been the Midwest, and many of our problems have been traceable to that fact. What I am going to say implies no fault in the midwestern breeders, to whom we and our breed have an enormous debt. It is nevertheless true that, for a flock of sheep, living is easier in the prairie lands than on a Kentucky hillside. Just walking around on a hillside farm involves more strain and requires more energy, and the less fertile the land the farther a ewe will have to walk to fill her belly. Knees that might have remained sound on the gentle topography of Ohio or Iowa may become arthritic at our place. Also a ewe that would have twin lambs on a prairie farm may have only one on a hill farm. Similarly, a lamb will grow to slaughter weight more slowly where he has to allocate more energy to getting around. We once sold five yearling ewes to our friend Bob Willerton in Danvers, Illinois, where on their first lambing they produced eleven lambs. On our farm, they might have produced seven or eight. We have noticed the same difference with cull ewes that we have sent to our son’s farm, which is less steep and more fertile than ours.

  Our farm, then, is asking for a ewe that can stay healthy, live long, breed successfully, have two lambs without assistance, and feed them well, in comparatively demanding circumstances. Experience has shown us that the Border Cheviot breed is capable of producing a ewe of this kind, but that it does not do so inevitably. In eighteen years, and out of a good many ewes bought or raised, we have identified so far only two ewe families (the female descendants of two ewes) that fairly dependably perform as we and our place require.

  The results of identifying and keeping the daughters of these ewe families have been very satisfactory. This year they made up more than half of our bred ewes. Presumably because of that, our lambing percentage, which previously hovered around 150 percent, increased to 172
percent. This year also we reduced our winter hay-feeding by one month, not beginning until the first of February. Next year, we hope to feed no hay until we bring the ewes to the barn for lambing, which will be about the first of March.1 In livestock breeding it is always too early to brag, but of course we are encouraged.

  In the language of Phillip Sponenberg and Carolyn Christman’s excellent Conservation Breeding Handbook, we have employed “extensive” or “land-race” husbandry in managing a standardized breed. From the first, our flock has been “challenged by the environment”—required to live on what the place can most cheaply and sustainably provide, mainly pasture, with a minimum of attention and virtually no professional veterinary care. We give selenium injections to ewes and lambs and use a prudent amount of medication for parasites. We give no inoculations except for tetanus to the newborn lambs, and we have never trimmed a hoof.

  Until recently, and even now with ewes, our practice has been to buy bargains, animals that for one reason or another fell below the standards of the show ring. But I don’t believe that our flock would have developed to our standards and requirements any faster if we had bought the champions out of the best shows every year. Some of the qualities we were after simply are not visible to show ring judges.

  I am not trying to argue that there is no good in livestock shows. The show ring is a useful tool; it is obviously instructive when good breeders bring good animals together for comparison. I am saying only that the show ring alone cannot establish and maintain adequate standards for livestock breeders. You could not develop locally adapted strains if your only standards came from the show ring or from breed societies.

  The point is that, especially now when grain-feeding and confinement-feeding are so common, no American breeder should expect any breed to be locally adapted. Breeders should recognize that from the standpoint of local adaptation and cheap production, every purchase of a breeding animal is a gamble. A newly purchased ewe or buck may improve the performance of your flock on your farm or it may not. Good breeders will know, or they will soon find out, that theirs is not the only judgment that is involved. While the breeder is judging, the breeder’s farm also is judging, enforcing its demands, and making selections. And this is as it should be. The judgment of the farm serves the breed, helping to preserve its genetic diversity.