How can we break the cycle of bigger farms and fewer farmers? [View all]

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http://grist.org/food/how-can-we-break-the-cycle-of-bigger-farms-and-fewer-farmers/

The calculus that drives farmers off the land, and drives the documentary Dryland, is simple and inexorable. Historian Keith Williams lays it out halfway through the movie: Think of the farmer cutting wheat by hand, then zoom forward in history, past the farmers harvesting with teams of horses, past the first tractors, past the first combines (so called because they combined the reaping, threshing, and winnowing in one machine), to the air-conditioned, satellite-guided modern combine. “Well, that same change has really altered the farm size, which means the farm can grow,” Williams says. “More capitalization, they can get more equipment. All of this translates into more acreage per farm. But that also means fewer farmers.”

More efficiency, more land, fewer farmers. It’s also the calculus that has given us cheap food. Cheap food relies on ridiculously cheap grain. One farmer in the film notes that he bought a loaf of whole wheat bread for the same price that he sold an entire bushel of wheat.

Dryland, directed by Sue Arbothnot and Richard Wilhelm, is a wistful documentary — lots of long shots on beautiful empty fields, empty storefronts, empty streets, rusting equipment — and rightfully so. The way of life it captures is contracting, ratcheting in on itself, leaving small towns that are unable to support businesses, and schools without students.

http://vimeo.com/67524133

The documentary follows Josh Knodel and Matt Miller, two friends in the town of Lind, Wash. When Miller finishes high school, he is one of eight graduates in his class. The boys fix up old combines to enter in the yearly destruction derby, the cultural high point for many families in the area. The movie follows them as they become a dominant force in the competition. There are always parts to be scrounged, because there are plenty of old combines aging out of their useful lives. Those old combines had to come from somewhere: Farmers who failed, or who upgraded to the newer and better model. But, as one farmer points out, at $350,000 for a new combine, “you gotta cut a lot of acres to make a payment on that.”