Like to eat food? Remember the farmers who make it possible
By:Hugh Brennan
"The Farmer Feeds Us All," the title of the old Depression-era song reminds us of an elemental fact of life. None of us lives more than another week or so without the continuous and productive efforts of the American farmer.
We’ll get an opportunity next week to have some fun and get a closer look at our county’s agricultural life when the Somerset County 4-H Fair returns to its Milltown Road location Friday through Sunday, Aug. 18-20.
This is the largest 4-H fair under canvas east of the Mississippi. It’s a chance for you and your family to get close to the animals, and to meet the young people who will inherit our farming tradition.
It is our farming tradition. All of us are descended from farmers, mostly peasant farmers at that. For every one of those knights in shining armor, there were a hundred of us scratching away in the dirt from first light until dark.
We were allowed to keep enough to survive and the rest went to the landowner. Any drought, flood or pests that led to crop failure resulted in famine and death.
The story of the peopling of America is the story of people in search of freedom. We often talk of the search for freedom of religion, of conscience, of political freedom, but the truth is, masses of us came here for freedom from hunger.
Imagine the joy of the old Dutchmen who, in their native country, had been so starved for land as to have been forced to erect miles of dykes in their struggle to make farmland from the sea, when they first plotted and plowed the rolling hills of Somerset County.
But we, in our white-collar world, are almost completely divorced from the world of the people who make the world work. Our meat comes wrapped in plastic, our fish is laid out under glass, our oil is delivered refined and fortified, our wood is cut, planed and sanded.
The amazing efforts required to keep us alive and the wheels turning are hidden from us and, so very easily discounted.
I’ve always been amazed at how much the modern farmer knows and how many skills he is proficient in. My Uncle Bob was a farmer in Ireland before he emigrated. He could repair gas and diesel engines, pour concrete, do rough and finish carpentry, he could do masonry and plumbing, weld and wire. I guess he knew something about animals and growing, but in the United States he ran a construction company.
Our modern farmers practice all these hand skills along with a scientific approach to animal husbandry and crop production. Computers are as common on the farm today as plowhorses were in generations past.
Some things however have never changed.
The farmer’s fate remains prisoner to the weather and the market. Here in Hillsborough last years drought losses have been compounded by the damage from this years surplus of rain. Wheat in the fields has sprouted before it was dry enough to get the machines and men in to harvest it.
The tradition is deep. We city folk can have no inkling of the richness of life on the land, connected to, immersed in the cycles of life. There can be no more essentially human endeavor the making the earth productive.
The love of this life must be deep, to continue in the face of all the hazards erected by man and nature. We must be careful to nurture our awareness as the farmer’s numbers and voice shrinks.
As our population continues to swell and our cropland continues to shrink you can expect to start hearing about a concept known as "food security."
According to one school of thought we shouldn’t worry. It doesn’t matter where the food is grown. The market will rule. Our continued wealth will give us the edge in the global competition for calories.
Others, worried about food-borne illness, a lack of food safety in Third World products and the spectacle of rich nations buying foodstuffs out of impoverished nation’s larders, believe we must protect and cherish our productive land for more than its value as scenery.
We also need to cherish the people who work that land. To protect their right to farm, and their right to a fair return. Go to the 4-H fair, take your kids, let them pet the critters, and when you have dinner tonight, remember the farmer. You can’t eat asphalt.
Hugh Brennan is a free-lance writer who lives in New Jersey.