End of the family farm culture?

摘要

The realities of industrialised farming contrast painfully with the pastoral notions of an agricultural system that many of us still hold dear. Rural communities are dying all over the industrialised world, yet the food system appears to go from strength to strength. In an old landscape only recently converted to farming, yet another farm sale takes place in the morning mist. In the mid-west, grain bowl of North America, and home to generations of family fanners, the gavel smacks down on piles of rusting machinery, mournful animals, and acres of desolate farmland. The life and history of another farm family is dispersed to the four winds. The farm is swallowed up, so that another farm can compete better, until that too needs to get bigger again. During the past 50 years, four million farms have disappeared in the United States. That is equivalent to 219 for every single one of those 18,000 days.