Second President’s Message
Message from Larry Brewer, President…March 2010
In recent months I have been asked the same two questions by a number of individuals, so I thought I would take the time to answer these in an open message to all who visits the Small Farms Conservancy web site. The questions are: 1)”isn’t our agriculture the best in the world and aren’t we already producing more food than we can use?”and 2) “why does the conservancy express such urgency about re-establishing small farms in North America?” The answers to these questions are closely connected, and not brief. I’ll answer the first question on this page and get back to the second question in my next President’s Message.
The current agricultural era, which has been marked by corporation-manipulated government policy that has crippled small scale independent family farming, is also known as the era of industrialized agriculture. Many proponents of the industrialization process have credited it with the so called “greening of America”. To the contrary, I believe future historians will not be kind to the architects and practitioners of the agriculture industrialization movement that has perpetuated massive soil loss, derailed a diverse and healthy agricultural economy and disemboweled agricultural communities across our continent. One only has to visit small rural communities anywhere in North America to observe the effects I’m describing. While this industrialization has added handsomely to the economic wellbeing of many corporations, it has cost the public millions of tons of lost topsoil and steady degradation of public nutrition and health. continue reading…
