in the mirror

Farmer suicide is on an uptrend. Some would call it a spike. I would not because I fear it is not done going up. There are reasons for this. An erratic and foolish President who gets a kick out of playing with agriculture markets would be one, also a chicken magnate as Secretary of Agriculture who thinks there really is no room for any on the farms who are not huge businesses.

Climate change tends to make knee jerk reactions out of carefully laid cropping plans. Government responses to both climate and political meddling are hugely expensive and pretty much ineffective.

But perhaps the most central reason is who we are as farmers and how we think. We tend to hold ourselves responsible for everything. Every bad thing that happens on our farms is our responsibility, we think. We are to blame. And the truth is that this delusion has spread throughout the economy. Our tendancy to blame ourselves is the very best and sweetest success of those who already have most of the money and use it to control the economy, the technology and the government.

Farmers do have some control. But that fact is hedged about with truly insurmountable odds on all sides. We can decide to plant corn, but will not succeed if we must wait til a week into June to get to the field. We can decide to rely on our understanding of livestock animals to earn our living but cannot succeed if the market fences us out because of small size, for instance, or difficult milk pick up, or if Silicon Valley decides to create and peddle an end run around the very idea of animal based protein. We can study and pay attention to soil health, but will have little impact if our primary attention must be to the job that provides us money the farm doesn’t and health care for our family.

Anger is a very appropriate emotion in our circumstance. Properly harnessed by a shrewd perception as to where blame actually lies for our predicament it can be hugely useful. But never if it is largely focused upon the person we see in the mirror.

Leo Tolstoy knew this and wrote about it more than a hundred years ago: “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible. . .except by getting off his back.”

The rich are every bit as greedy as they were a century ago, plus today they are cheeky enough to put it out that they, and only they, have the solutions to our problems.

friends and adversaries

One of the things we learned when we began selling our meats directly to customers and stores is that it is not possible to get them on the shelf everywhere.  Consequently we began to be reluctant to patronize restaurants, for example, where we couldn't get our products into their kitchens.  If we stick strictly to this, we eliminate about ninety percent of restaurants.  All of the major chains, of course.  And in fact, we have gone a considerable distance in this direction without being too doctrinaire about it.  It means we spend a good deal more money when we do eat out, and do not eat out very often. 

This strikes me as close to the argument as to how citizenship must extend well beyond elections.  First key is to spend less.  This makes us less beholden to the mass economy.  We do not have to work to replace a dollar we have not spent.  Second, then, is to spend with friends.  This means we must learn the difference between friends and adversaries and support our friends.  We can learn a lot about how we should act by watching how these major companies behave.  If one of them is causing mayhem for people, there is no reason to support that with our dollars.

We once sat at a table with friends in our business, a family that produced and bottled milk for sale in the city.  We had organized our farm organization's meal for the evening, using local products as much as possible and another fellow at the table remarked as to how he could buy milk at the local gas station/convenience store for much less than the price our friends were selling it.  Our friend simply responded "It's not the same product"

It is not.  Our friend's milk was made on grass, with no drugs, and with careful attention to the cow genetics that can cause milk intolerance issues for certain people.  The milk the other fellow was buying was sold in a gas station convenience store owned by the Koch brothers, they who had caused political upheaval in Wisconsin.   The milk source was unknown. 

Doing business with our friends when possible is one of those things we will have to get right.  It really is simply citizenship.  We make the kind of world we want to live in.