Guest Column: Labor of the land

by Kyra Williams of UM Farm to College | March 9, 2010 | Montana Kaimin

In 1782, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.” In the 21st century, how many of us would be considered the chosen people of God in these terms? Would my trip to the grocery store last night constitute as labor of the earth?

As a nation, we have paired progress and advancement with industry and innovation, moving ourselves farther from physical labor and the natural world. 

This is not a down-with-industry article. Our current food system has provided convenience; it has allowed women to leave the house, it has fostered our ability to travel, and it has provided an abundance of affordable food, but all this comes at a price.

Our food system has evolved from a once-regional food economy to a now-national and increasingly global food system. The food that is grown within the borders of the United States is overwhelmingly produced as a commodity in a declining number of geographic pockets and then travels an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches our bellies. With fewer and fewer people choosing to become farmers, the labor of the land has been minimized from the agricultural equation, leading us to focus on high-yield monoculture fields that produce an abundance of products that must be highly processed to provide us with “food-like substances.” Their production is drenched in petroleum and their consumption is contributing to the ever-growing obesity epidemic in America.

In October, I made my first trip to the Midwest. As I toured the vast flat land of corn, soy, and pork (Iowa), I was astounded by the reality of industrial agriculture. The landscape was sterile, a completely controlled environment. It was harvest season and the “labor in the earth” consisted of getting in the big rig and milling down row after row of corn. How else would one person harvest thousands, literally thousands, of acres of one crop? Jefferson’s push for an agrarian economy was based on goals of self-sufficiency and independence. I am sorry to say the farmers I met in Iowa were far from self-reliant.

These corn farmers were dependent on chemical fertilizer companies to supply them with synthetic nutrients because their monoculture crops are degrading the soil. They needed companies to provide them with seeds that could resist the pesticides they had to use in order to protect their crops from infections — remember the E. coli spinach scare of 2006? — since monoculture crops are more susceptible. They are dependent on banks to loan them the vast capital needed for modern equipment. After all that investment, they are left with a product that they cannot eat and cannot make a living on without the help of the U.S. government to supply them with their commodity crop subsidy check. Self-sufficiency? I think not.

Although the equation looks daunting, our situation is not wholly helpless. Recently, there have been numerous developments in the U.S. food system on both a local and national level that are evoking a Jeffersonian vision of the way the American landscape should be developed. People are digging gardens all across the country that range in scope from the White House lawn to our own University Center’s lawn. The USDA just introduced a “Know Your Farmer” initiative. The number of farmers’ markets is growing annually, reaching about 4,800 nationally.

Community-supported agriculture models are on the rise and programs like Farm to Table, Farm to College, Farm to School, Farm to Hospital and Farm to everything in between are sprouting up and encouraging a more sustainable food system. This trend in local food is not coming close to supplying our food needs, but it is making leaps and bounds in its ability to reconnect us mentally with the land and labor that we have all but forgotten.

It is unreasonable and unlikely for us to believe that everyone needs to get back to the land and get down like it’s 1799. It’s not going to happen. What must happen, and what I believe is starting to happen, is that the nation must acknowledge the work that farmers do and ennoble the profession as a whole. Through this recognition, we will become more informed of the agricultural capacity of our regional landscape. Just as the organic movement of the ’50s and ’60s finally went mainstream and changed the way food was produced, hopefully these efforts will encourage a new generation of farmers and eaters to labor in the land or at least conceptualize it. 

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