Young Agrarians: Digging The Future

Cross-posted from The Green Fork.

Our economic contractions have given birth to a new demographic--the "frugalistas." The rise of thrifty hipsters who get their thrills from no-frill living marks "a re-emergence of thrift as a value," according to the New York Times. From secondhand shops to homegrown crops, penny pinching's taken on a new luster.

Chasing dollars, on the other hand, appears to be passé, thanks to the fiascos that tanked the banks and tarnished Wall Street's image:

Today, the financial crisis and the economic downturn are likely to alter drastically the career paths of future years...

...And early indications suggest new career directions that are tethered less to the dream of an immediate six-figure paycheck on Wall Street than to the demands of a new public agenda to solve the nation's problems.

We need to "make banking boring again," as Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist, declared last week. His fellow columnist Frank Rich chimed in with a Sunday op-ed bemoaning the fact that our culture of greed siphoned off "gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors."

Or farmers, perhaps? We need to make growing food a prestigious profession again, as it was when our country was founded. Thomas Jefferson believed that "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens...As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else."

What Jefferson couldn't foresee is that we'd convert our farmers to fossil fuels. As Bill McKibben writes in Deep Economy:

The number of farmers has fallen from half the American population to about 1 percent, and in essence those missing farmers have been replaced with oil. We might see fossil fuel as playing the same role that slaves played in early American agriculture--"a natural resource" that comes cheap.

Of course, that "cheap" energy doesn't seem like such a bargain if you factor in all the disease and pollution that can be traced to our current system of industrial agriculture. But guess what? It's not more efficient, either. As McKibben discovered:

According to the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture, smaller farms produce far more food per acre, whether you measure in tons, calories, or dollars. They use land, water, and oil much more efficiently; if they have animals, the manure is a gift, not a threat to public health.

But in order to take the petroleum out of our food chain, we'll have to repopulate the farms. To switch to sustainable, small-scale agriculture will require millions of newly minted farmers. Can we accomplish such a seismic cultural shift? Young people are certainly showing a renewed interest in farming and gardening that bodes well. As Twilight Greenaway noted on Culinate last week:

If you're a young person eager to get into farming in the U.S. these days, you can choose between 68 different colleges and universities offering classes and degree programs in sustainable agriculture.

But, adds Greenaway, the young would-be farmer faces numerous obstacles, two of the greatest being low wages and the high cost of land. Greenhorns director Severine von Tscharner Fleming, the filmmaker/farmer who's out to recruit a new generation of farmers, told Greenaway:

We would like to live in a world where it is possible to go to school and then do a series of apprenticeships and on-the-job trainings and eventually become an owner-operator of your own farm.

The current reality for young farmers is more uncertain, as von Tscharner Fleming points out:

...It's not by any means a predictable trajectory, like from high school to college to grad school to, say, medical school to internship to professional salary."

We are at a critical juncture, here, with profound implications for our future. Defenders of industrial agriculture would have you believe that advocates of small-scale farming are luddites who'd drag us back to an era of drudgery and deprivation. In fact, while sustainable agriculture is based on tried and tested methods of growing food and building soil, it welcomes ecologically savvy innovation. As Bill McKibben notes:

The new farming technologies are perhaps the most exciting new "inventions" of our age--more important, in the long run, than the iPod or maybe even the Internet.

Here in New York City, there's an unprecedented interest in urban agriculture, from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's Food In The Public Interest policy initiative to the Community Agriculture Club at New York University to Just Food's chicken-keeping workshops and petitions to bring back composting and legalize beekeeping. There are frequent permaculture workshops at community gardens, and field trips to farms.

This Thursday, April 16th, there's a Youth Forum & Expo at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, on Food, Farming and Active Living. Sponsored by the Baum Forum in collaboration with the NYC Food and Fitness Partnership, the Youth Forum & Expo is aimed at youths from ages 15 to 24 and is intended to "inspire young people to engage with the kaleidoscope of important issues surrounding food systems and healthy lifestyles, and to empower them with the tangible resources necessary to become active change agents in and around New York City."

And that's just a taste of the real food revolution that's brewing in New York City. Beyond our five boroughs, there are similar events and organizations in communities all over the country geared towards inspiring young people to become engaged in food production, as well as nationwide campaigns such as The Real Food Challenge.

The RFC, a network of college and university students, is campaigning to bring food that's local, fair, ecologically sound, and humane to their campus dining halls, while organizing and training the next generation of food justice activists. As the RFC's Northeast Regional Coordinator, Sam Lipschultz, told me recently:

We're helping to empower young people to take a stake in their food system and in their future by demanding that their schools divest from the dominant industrial food system that has been exploiting workers, communities, land and sea for centuries, and invest in a real food economy that is not just about local food, not just about organic food, but about a food economy that respects the dignity of all workers, that supports ecologically produced food, and that will nourish our communities for generations to come.

Move over, Masters of the Universe. Here come the Saviors of the Soil.

Follow Kerry Trueman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrytrueman

Comments

[ReelBusy]

Young Agrarians!
I love that David Bowie song.

[TJCole]

Yes but also let's grow Hemp Industrial Hemp for fuel which will free up corn again as a food product and feed for livestock...it would greatly increase the income of family farms organic farms as well if you like..

We can get ethanol from it's stalks and bio diesel from it's seeds and even charcoal to replace dirty coal...and it renews every 4 months no less oh yeah and eats loads of CO2..!

http://hemp4fuel.com/

Hemp 4 Fuel...

[Paula Crossfield - Huffpost Blogger]

Great piece! Also, take a look at what they are doing in Japan:

NYT: In Hard Times, Japan Delves to Its Roots
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/asia/15iht-farmer.html?scp=1&sq=japan%20roots&st=cse

We need a young farmer corps here, too!

Paula

[JnrNorman]

Legalize Hemp
Take the seeds feed them to chickens and you get "SUPER CHICKENS"
they grow twice as fast.
Feed the seeds to egg-layers and you get "SUPER EGGS" full of healthy EFA's

[ReelBusy]

And an hour later your hungry for cheetos....

[liecatcher]

Dear Kerry Trueman:

I've been a vegetarian since 1968; have read DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET; and also SEEDS OF DECEPTION.

You have a great idea about recruiting young people to become farmers.

However, succeeding will be hampered by the AGRO-CHEMICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

This miscreant bunch of criminals actually sent MICHELLE OBAMA a hateful communication

chastising her for growing an organic garden without the use of their toxic chemicals.

What these FASCISTS have done to farmers in India (told in the SEEDS OF DECEPTION BOOK,

and painfully illustrated in the CD version) is analogous to what the COAL BARRONS have done

to the poor people in WEST VIRGINIA , TENNESSEE, and other places that allow

"MOUNTAIN TOPPING"--pure predatory exploitation pursuing profits.

Their goal is to completely control every aspect of the food supply.

When the ethanol hoax plays out and the farmers that received $millions in subsidies go bankrupt,

guess who will buy up these farms for pennies on the dollar.

The YAHOO article about GERMANY fighting back may slow them down,

but like the drug & other cartels, they own the legislating bookmarkers and can't be stopped.

"Germany Bans Monsanto Crop

Germany has become the sixth European country to ban genetically modified

maIze produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto. The German government

said the Monsanto crop is harmful to the environment. Until the new ban,

it had been the only Monsanto crop permitted in Germany."

[katekid]

"Boring And Frugal Is The New Black"
What the heck does "The New Black" mean?

[CaptainFailmore]

Newly fashionable, as the color black evidently once was in popular attire.

I'd like to think it's an 80's thing.

[boredwell]

Damn, I've been at this for years. New black? Ah, you mean as in saving money. Back in the pre-recession days, my agrarian couture was referred to as crazy. Those neighbors who wore the old black, droveshiny black cars and sat on black leather furniture wondered wild-eyed, "The corner store sells organic. And it's cheap." Well, they're not saying that anymore.

[JBoy]

A world without farming is a world without food. We need farmers, but it's very hard work - and annually dependent on the weather. Unfortunately, there are few incentives for farmers. I grow lemons, and this year there's no demand...and no stimulus money.

btw, I must have missed something...what is "the new black?"

[ReelBusy]

Some one has to say it:
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade....

The new black refers to the new "reliable, standard" thing

[valkyrie607]

Check out the Intervale Farm Incubator in Burlington, VT. It's a decades-old, highly successful program designed to defray big start-up costs like land and large farm equipment for beginning farmers. It's awesome!

[robbor]

Why Boring And Frugal Is The New Black

...that's me, through and through

[Semaj51]

"We need to make growing food a prestigious profession again, as it was when our country was founded."

When our country was founded, it required over 80% of the population to be farmers. Modern technology reversed those numbers. Thomas Jefferson was a "gentleman farmer", owning a large plantation with numerous help doing the actual work. He, and many like him, were just a very small percentage of the actual farmers, many working from dawn to dusk hoping just to raise enough food to keep their family from starving.

[CaptainFailmore]

In Jefferson's day, farming was a way of life.

After the Green Revolution and the advent of refrigerated freight, it became an industry.

Now? Horticulture is so accessible now that it's become a hobby.

Funny how that works.

[liminal67]

If i Google frugal is me.. not really but I'd like to be...I need a garden... ahh... I need a house... with a yard.. my apartments driving me crazy...

http://pitchbendpost.blogspot.com/