The recent 2007 Census of Agriculture showed an increase in small farms - but the small farmers aren't making money. They can't expand into mid-sized farms, thus expanding their ability to feed more people, because they need to work full time jobs off the farm or they are living on fixed incomes as retirees.
The other bad news is that this number of small family farms can't feed all of us. Even though about a third of all farms in America are less than 50 acres, the land encompassed by these farms makes up only 1.8 percent of all farmland in America.
Why are small farms so important? Well, they are much more likely to use organic methods and to sell food directly to consumers than larger farms. They are much less likely to grow commodity crops that turn into processed junk than larger farms.
Another disturbing trend in agriculture has to do with location instead of size:
One-quarter of domestically grown vegetables and over half of domestically grown fruit come from California, even though California only contains 2.5 percent of America's cropland. (The percentage of vegetables from California is so low only because the vast majority of potatoes are grown outside California. If you exclude potatoes, California grows closer to one-third of America's vegetables.)
Outside of California, most farms are producing corn, soy, wheat, and hay - foods people can't directly eat. Those crops turn into the processed junk at the center of the supermarket. And even if you forget about buying your fruits and veggies locally and settle on stuff that was shipped to you from Cali, you might be in trouble as California faces a water crisis (and an overall climate crisis), leading Energy Secretary Steven Chu to say:
We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California.
Americans need to protect their farmland and their farmers if they want to secure a healthy and safe food supply for the future. |
