When I was growing up I had family members still involved with farming in Northwest Missouri. None of them were very large farms and when their wives were still alive they had large personal gardens with all sorts of produce. I also had a family member that was a pig farmer. Eventually as time passed a couple of these farmers got older and did not have children that wanted to continue on the land so they sold their lands to other farmers, allowing those farmers to have more land to plant crops; crops such as corn, wheat, sorghum and soy. The pig farmer had to eventually sell his pigs and take up truck driving. This was in the 90s, the same time that massive pig farms were picking up in the Midwest. This caused smaller farmers to be forced out of the business since they couldn’t compete with these large facilities producing more meat in a smaller area and meat on a faster scale. This holds true for most agricultural sectors. Eventually most of the small family farms were sold off to larger farms – farms that became monocultures, farms that were sometimes owned by corporations. It is all very sad.
The nice thing now is small farms are coming back. Farmers’ markets are now popular along with u-pick farms, CSAs and local produce. All of these support and promote small, local farms. It is nice that we are going back to agriculture as it once was. I don’t think these massive monocultures are good for our society or environment. They promote a surplus of unnecessary crops (corn and soy), require massive amounts of pesticides, and threaten our bee populations. Going back to smaller farms makes me excited in that we are moving towards a better direction. It is very easy to get discouraged in all the changes that need to be made to be a sustainable society, but with this change it is easy to be excited about the future.
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