\nthe 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years,
\nthe Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy
\nInnovations & Opportunities<\/a> held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C.,
\nrises to the top. Actual farmers—not just commodity crop growers but
\ninnovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and Rosanna Bauman from
\nKansas—got to tell the USDA what they needed to survive.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But
\nwere policymakers listening? Many of the invited speakers with a political row to hoe seemed to be concerned about one segment of farmers in particular.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a>Farm building in southwest Story County, Iowa.Photo: cwwycoff1<\/a> via Flickr<\/a>Secretary <\/p>\n Among <\/p>\n Bill <\/p>\n I There I found the chutzpah to make that comment because I had Even’s <\/p>\n Even <\/p>\n Even <\/p>\n He said he was meeting Tuesday in South Dakota with a group called “Ag <\/p>\n Phrases like “big tent” and “ag unity” make for <\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is collecting policy recommendations and ideas for a Beginning Farmer Bill for the 2012 Farm Bill via email<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Are you a farmer at heart? Start a ‘Crop Mob’<\/a><\/p>\n Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 7<\/a><\/p>\n
\nof Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the conference with the message that to
\npreserve and grow rural America, which is the heart and soul of this country,
\nwe need to stop thinking about big versus small and start thinking more
\ninclusively. He shared the usual dismal statistics—the increased
\nunemployment in these areas, the lower per-capita income, and how more than 57%
\nof rural counties have shrunk. All to say, what we’ve been doing to conserve
\nand grow rural America isn’t working.<\/p>\n
\nthe alternative strategies the administration has launched recently is the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food<\/a> initiative, intended to shore up the shrinking numbers of farmers. There are
\ntremendous opportunities to build on local and regional supply chains through
\nconnecting local products to local consumption, Vilsack noted, but then quickly
\nfollowed with “it’s not the only answer, though.”<\/p>\n
\nEven<\/a>, South Dakota’s Secretary of Agriculture, picked up that thread. He
\nbegan by asking the Republicans in the room to raise their hand: a paltry 5 out
\nof 200 shot up. After praising the USDA’s Know Your Farmer initiative for
\nhelping to reconnect society to the soil, he got to the message that he
\nrepeated throughout his 10-minute speech: “Don’t disparage one type of
\nagriculture”—by which he meant conventional, large-scale industrial “production”
\nagriculture. Quoting his mother, he said that “blowing out someone else’s
\ncandle doesn’t make yours burn brighter,” and echoing Vilsack, he ended
\nwith how “this is a big tent for all types of agriculture.”<\/p>\n
\npresented at the Drake Forum on behalf of beginning farmers (along with Zoe
\nBradbury, a young farmer and Grist contributor<\/a>)
\nand to share how Farm to
\nSchool programs offer
\na new, stable market for farmers and an opportunity to teach agriculture
\nliteracy to youth. After Dan Durheim from the American Farm Bureau Federation made comments
\nalong the same lines as Even and Vilsack, I felt it necessary to make a pointed
\ncomment to the closing plenary:<\/p>\n
\nseems to be a common thread throughout this panel, that started off with the
\nSecretary’s welcoming remarks that there’s plenty of room at the USDA and in
\nfood and farm country for all types of agriculture, and to not be down on
\ncertain practices. But if we had done that in the 1860s,
\nwe never would have abolished slavery because slavery “worked” for
\nplantation owners. When atrazine is creating infertile rural populations<\/a>, it’s
\nnot about “blowing out a candle”—it’s about putting out a fire.<\/p>\n
\nchildren in mind; he had mentioned his 16-year-old son in his remarks. Being a
\nMidwesterner, however, I felt the need to tell him later that I wasn’t
\nattacking him personally, just the logic he used to come to what I thought was
\na short-sighted conclusion, to which he responded, “yeah, you kind of
\nthrew me under the bus.”<\/p>\n
\nhad started his presentation with, “To understand where someone stands, you
\nneed to know where they stood,” so I outlined my own
\nrural conservative roots and told him I come from a farming family. I wanted
\nhim to see that I am not just some liberal academic
\npointing fingers at farmers, but that we share in
\nmany ways a common background from which I have diverged. While yes,
\nthere “is room for” all types of agriculture, I believe we must acknowledge
\nthat some types of agriculture are broken—making us and our land sick, and
\ndraining our rural communities of youth.<\/p>\n
\nsaid he agreed with me. That if agriculture doesn’t make sense “economically,
\nscientifically, or socially, then it has to change.”<\/p>\n
\nUnity,” which he implied is to bring opposing groups working in their
\nproverbial rural silos together. But the
\nonly description I can find<\/a> of Ag Unity is for “an umbrella group of
\nsome 20 agriculture-related groups” that sounds a lot like they’re all
\nhailing from the same side of the commodity-focused production fence.<\/p>\n
\ngood speeches but bad policy when it comes to the next generation of farmers. Real unity is about finding common
\nground for “mother nature and the workers, the reapers and the threshers, the
\nseedlings and the raindrops, the bakers and the truckers, the ranchers and the
\nfarmers, the butchers and inspectors, the cows and special cheffers,” as the
\nfifth graders from Elysian Charter School sang in “Who Put That Burger on Your Plate<\/a>?” (the winning video in last year’s “Real Food Is” winning Farm to School contest). And that’s going to take leadership that’s not afraid to level the
\ngrowing field through targeted procurement and research funding.<\/p>\n
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