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When I talk about supporting farmers, I inevitably get people in the comments attacking the way other people farm. We may disagree about what agriculture should look like. Personally, if given the choice, I would eat everything organic. I prefer grass fed beef, non-GMO food and regenerative agriculture. But I’m not going to allow people on my platform to bash farmers because they do things differently than you would.
At least they are farming the land. A hundred years ago, roughly a quarter of the American workforce was in agriculture. Today it’s less than 2%. We left our agricultural roots, moved to cities, pursued other careers and expected a smaller and smaller group of people to feed everybody else.
I understand how farmers end up scaling because I did it myself. I needed to make land payments, so I kept adding animals until I had more than one person could reasonably manage. I got in over my head. When the land, equipment and everything else has to be paid for, you have to produce enough to pay for it. I may not like everything modern agriculture has become, but I understand how we got here.
Then I see people saying that because many farmers voted Republican, they deserve what is happening to them under this administration. I think that attitude is disgusting. Farmers have struggled under Republican and Democratic administrations. People on both sides have voted for politicians they believed would help them, only to find out they were lied to.
Your politicians do not care about you the way your neighbors do. The farmer down the road who farms differently or voted differently than you is not your enemy. I want to see healthier soil, regenerative farming, grass fed livestock and more food produced locally, but I’m not going to trash the people still farming because they don’t do it the way I prefer. And I will not tolerate celebrating a farmer losing their livelihood because you don’t like who they voted for. There are too few farmers left and too much farmland disappearing already.
