Local Organic Farms and Dairies

This is the second in a series of posts about buying and eating local food.

As of 2007, just 6% of farms produced 75% of the value of US agriculture production. Every minute two acres of farmland are lost to development. Between 1974 and 2002, the number of corporate-owned U.S. farms increased by more than 46 percent. These statistics are just a small taste of the crisis in our agricultural system.

I grew up in Iowa, where over 86% of the state is in farmland! Maryland certainly doesn’t compare. But even in Iowa farmland is being lost due to suburban sprawl. And the farmland that is left is being gobbled up by the big, evil, monstrous factory farms (hog confinements and other animal ‘factories’)! What makes them so evil? Okay, so they aren’t really evil, but they are putting small family farmers out of business. And they pollute soil and water from concentrated animal wastes. Frequently property values around these types of farms are reduced. And they overuse antibiotics which leads to drug resistant diseases. Some family farmers caught in the industrial food system do not truly own or control their operations. Well, maybe factory farms are evil. But corporate farm doesn’t necessarily mean evil. Some family farmers incorporate to take advantage of the tax breaks and other legal stuff that being a corporation affords them. The true evil is the massive, greedy, corporate farms that are run by a board of directors in some other town. They don’t care about the land the farm is on, or the community they feed, or the local economy. They care about the bottom line.

So, who will rescue us from the evil corporate farm? Dun-da-da-dun! You! By supporting smaller, sustainable, family farms, you can help stop the industrialization of farms. Join a CSA, shop at a farmer’s market, go to a u-pick farm. Make your money count. And try supporting better development regulations. Advocate more dense, more sustainable, development. Support the preservation/protection of rural spaces and farmland. Learn more about the process of development. Make your vote count.

Next up in the series: What is a CSA?