Who is going to farm?
I spend quite a bit of time reading the writings of people concerned with food, and yet more time talking with them. A constant refrain is that we need more small farms, hence more farmers. Another is that we need to get to know our farmers, to trust our farmers. And this last weekend I was at a conference in New Orleans on the Farm to Table Movement.
So from time to time I mention that my father, who had a degree from Cambridge University in Modern Languages and Economics, was a farmer.
The response. If your father had a degree from Cambridge, why would he farm?
Ah, well.
And that’s the shame of it. In the U.S. and Canada there are many farmers who are extremely intelligent and well educated – but many of those manage “mega-farms,” one assumes to pay for all that college education! But I’m hopeful that there are also many well educated people going into smaller farming operations – those that serve “farm-to-table.” Or did you find something otherwise at the conference? Here in Yucatán very few young people are learning from their fathers the traditional milpa practice – a great shame. Money or not, they would rather live in the city and have wi-fi access.
You know, David, I came from a big farm and I’m not hostile to them. I think it depends on the crop. And I’ve been scratching my head to think how milpas could be organized so that Mexicans could make a decent living out of them. Because if they can’t they will perish. And they are a great system.
Yes, the milpa system is great and has functioned brilliantly for thousands of years. It persists in Yucatán partly because of tradition (it’s simply what the campesinos know how to do) and partly because of poverty. This is subsistence living at its most refined. (I’m not being ironic.) In ancient times the Mayas had to farm enough to give tribute to the rulers (later the Spanish) as well as to have enough left over for themselves. Nowadays most of the poorer people just farm for themselves, with perhaps a bit left over to sell to neighbors or in the town market. Surplus is unheard of – and with no surplus, there isn’t enough money to “superarse.” In other words – sadly – the ancient milpa system continues to the present mainly thanks to poverty.
It’s the same in Guanajuato, David. And I can understand that if I enjoy electric light, television, running water, medicine, all of which make life more pleasant and pleasurable, others do too. The problem as we both know is that it’s just about impossible to mechanize polyculture. I think the best hope for the survival of the milpa is as a hobby to produce food for the family. That’s what many do in Guanajuato.
Interesting about the “hobby” aspect of it. I didn’t know about that in Guanajuato. (I’m excited to be going there at the end of the month!) To my knowledge nothing like that with respect to the milpa is going on In Yucatán. However, the solar is treated much like a hobby – all family members get involved in one way or another – and a lot has been written about (and funded) to keep the family solar alive and well.
Well, the campesinos would not call it “hobby.” But that’s what it is. They earn money in the commercial agriculture of the Bajio or as gardeners or as albaniles and keep up the milpa because they like products for their own use. Interesting about the solar.
Romance + Nostalgia = 85-95% of US farmers make ends meet with off-farm jobs. I love my vegetable garden, I shop at my farmer’s market, but it doesn’t seem like that will be enough.
It certainly doesn’t, does it?
Pingback: World-Eats Conversations » You call this sustainable?
Is it the trio of crops which make a milpa? Except for that particular combination, everyone’s vegetable garden could be a milpa since we all plant a variety of things. I think milpas for home consumption is the way to go. I just wish corn grew better in Hawaii
Not just the trio of crops (plus the greens that also grow there) but the fact that they grow intertwined and that between the corn, beans, and squash you have more or less complete nutrition. Those last two features are not necessarily found in vegetable gardens.