Farm Report #1

In this initial farm report, I'll lay out my underlying assumptions about most of you. You are among the 98% of Americans who are not directly engaged in agriculture. You are not even involved in an occupation dependent upon agriculture, such as food processing, or food shipping, or agricultural implement sales and service, or, well you get the idea. You live in a city or a suburb. Your food grows in the supermarket. Your water comes from the tap. Your electricity comes from the wall outlet. In fact, you know next to nothing about all the basic necessities of life. And this is a GOOD thing.

You are free to devote your talents to the advertising of dog flea collars, or the teaching of astrophysics to college students, or to your work in the accounting department at Belchfire Motors. You should be very glad that you are not in any way involved in agriculture. It is physically and financially risky. It can be hot, or cold, or dusty, or dangerous work. You can put an entire year into a crop, and not even get your growing expenses out of it.

You actually believe that farmers make so much money that they can afford to buy pesticides that they really don't need. You even seem to believe that farmers are willing to poison themselves and their families, just to earn a few extra bucks. You assume that farmers, unlike other Americans, are especially skilled at detecting fake immigration documents.

You seem to think that, while it is perfectly lovely to rent a house to an "undocumented worker," or sell him food and clothing, or educate his children at the taxpayers' expense, it is just awful to hire him. Your commercial relationships with the "undocumented worker" are good, humanitarian even, while his employer's commercial relationship with him is inherently evil. Can you spell "hypocrite"?

You are in a love-hate relationship with the American farmer. You enjoy the cheapest, safest, most nutritious, most palatable, and most reliable food supply in human history. And a lot of you apparently want to correct this problem. You are, in short, profoundly ignorant about the two percent who grow your food and fiber.

I don't expect many converts. I do hope to awaken your critical thinking faculties. I hope to get you to ask the obvious questions that neither CBS News nor the Sierra Club ever ask. And along the way, I hope to share with you some of the flavor of real life, out in the stix with the hix.

Have a comment? Send to rsturge@inreach.com

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