Market Farming

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The Rural Landscape in the 21st Century
http://www.kerrcenter.com/kerrweb/html/publicpolicy.html

Imagine you are taking a Sunday drive through a corner of rural America.
The sun is shining, wildflowers are blooming along the road and in strips
and meadows here and there to the horizon. The air is sweet with the smell
of new-mown hay. The air is pierced from time to time with the song of the
meadowlark and rush of a rain-swollen creek. It is tempting to get out and
dangle your toes in the clear water or bait a hook.

Along the road are well-kept homes and barns. Children are riding horses.
Soon you reach a country town and stop for a bite to eat at a home-grown
restaurant with a sign in the window: "Fresh Made Blackberry Cobbler."
People nod as you walk down the thriving Main Street. You pick up some
tomatoes and peaches from the Farmers' Market at the corner. When you get
in your car and drive away it is with a twinge of regret, but also with a
pleasant memory.

This scene might sound idealized to some. Perhaps because a Sunday drive
through today's rural America is often a far cry from the above
description. If you venture far from an urban area you may pass fields that
stretch to the horizon, but only a few nice houses and barns. Worn-looking
mobile homes that look only vaguely attached to the land dot the landscape
near the bigger towns.

Opening the window for a deep breath of that fresh country air is out of
the question. The air is rotten with the odor from the mega factory farms
that have moved into the areas, where tens of thousands of hogs are
confined. And who would want to linger by streams colored a fluorescent
shade of green, choked with algae from those industrial farms?

The highway still may wind through country towns, but these have been
struck with "rural blight': shuttered Main Street businesses and crumbling
buildings. Homemade cobbler or fresh peaches are nowhere to be found,
though you might be able to pick up a bag of Oreos at a tiny gas
pump/convenience store. The towns seem on the verge of disappearance. Few
would regret leaving this landscape.

These landscapes represent opposite ends of the spectrum of life today in
rural America. Much of rural America is somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, the trend for the last fifty years, accelerated in the last
ten, is toward the latter scenario. Both the people living in the trailers
and the people in the solid brick homes are struggling to make a life for
themselves in country where their families have lived for generations. The
numbers tell the tale: since 1950, the number of farms has been cut in
half. The number of farmers has declined by 80%. The result: some of the
poorest counties in the nation are in rural areas. Rural areas have a drug
problem as severe as those of big city neighborhoods.

The decline of the family farm is at the root of the decline of rural
America. Declining economies in rural communities affect farm and ranch
families who rely on local businesses, schools, and hospitals. The reverse
is also true . . . fewer farmers and ranchers means fewer businesses on
Main Street. What results is a downward spiral that ends in a ghost town or
a town that has adopted "desperation economics," as Kerr Center Jim Horne
puts it. Such a town welcomes polluting, low-paying industries whose
profits do not stay in the community, but go into the coffers at some
corporate headquarters in another state. All for the sake of jobs, any
jobs.

The fate of America's rural communities therefore goes hand-in-hand with
the fate of America's family farms and vice-versa. They are undeniably
linked.