beings—and so, perhaps, beyond the control of human institutions. How large can a machine be before it ceases to serve people and begins to subjugate them?
The size of landholdings is likewise a political fact. In any given region there is a farm size that is democratic, and a farm size that is plutocratic or totalitarian. A great danger to democracy now in the United States is the steep decline in the number of people who own farmland—or landed property of any kind. (According to a just-published report of the General Accounting Office, “Today, it is estimated that less than one-half of all farmland is owned by the operator.”) Earl Butz has suggested that this is made up for by the increased numbers of people who own insurance policies. But the value of insurance policies fluctuates with the value of money, whereas the real value of land never varies; it is always equal to the value of survival, of life. When this value is controlled by a wealthy or powerful minority, then democracy is reduced to mere governmental forms, easy to destroy or ignore.
Moreover, in any given region there is a limit beyond which a farm outgrows the attention, affection, and care of a single owner.
The size of fields is also a matter of agricultural concern. Fields can be too big to permit effective rotation of grazing, or to prevent erosion of land in cultivation. In general, the steeper the ground, the smaller should be the fields. On the steep slopes of the Andes, for instance, agriculture has survived for thousands of years. This survival has obviously depended on holding the soil in place, and the Andean peasants have an extensive methodology of erosion control. Of all their means and methods, none is more important than the smallness of their fields—which is permitted by the smallness of their technology, most of the land still being worked by hand or with oxen.
2. The Problem of Balance. Finding the correct ratio between people and land, so that maintenance always equals production. This is obviously related to the problem of scale. In the correct solution to these problems, such problems as soil erosion and soil compaction will be solved.
But also each farm and each farmer must establish the proper ratio between plants and animals. This is the foundation of agricultural independence. In this balance of plants and animals the fertility cycle is kept complete, or as nearly complete as possible. Ideally, the farm would provide its own fertility. However, in commercial farming, when so many nutrients are shipped off the farm as food, it is necessary to return them to the farm in the form of composted “urban wastes”—sewage, garbage, etc.
By studying the problem of balance, one discovers the carrying capacity of a farm—that is, the amount it can produce without diminishing its ability to produce.
When the problem of balance is solved, a farm’s production becomes more or less constant. The farm will no longer be stocked or cultivated according to fluctuations of the market—which is not agriculture but an imitation, on the farm, of industrial economics.
3. The Problem of Diversity. This is the only possible agricultural “backup system.” On the farm it means not putting all the eggs in one basket; it means—within the limits of nature, sense, and practicality—having as many kinds, as many species, as possible.
In terms of our country’s agriculture as a whole, too, it means the diversity of species. But it also means as many different kinds of good agriculture as possible: farms changing in kind, as necessary, from one location to another; but also truck farms and part-time farms near cities, to increase local self-sufficiency and independence; and home gardens everywhere, in the cities as well as in the country.
4. The Problem of Quality. Quality, as I shall understand it here, is indistinguishable from health—bodily health, coming from good food, but also economic, political, cultural, and spiritual health. All these kinds of health are related. And I hope that my discussion of the other problems has begun to make clear how dependent health is on good work.
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE HAS tended to look on the farmer as a “worker”—a sort of obsolete but not yet dispensable machine—acting on the advice of scientists and economists. We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist. It is the good work of good farmers—nothing else—that ensures a sufficiency of food over the long term.
Ignoring that, industrial economics has encouraged poor work on the farm. I believe that it has done so because poor work can be easily priced. Since poor work lasts only a short time, the money value of its whole life can be readily calculated. Good work, which in fact or influence endures beyond the foresight of economists, can be valued but not priced, because its worth is incalculable. I am talking about the difference, say, between a wire fence and a stone wall, or between any gasoline engine and any good breed of livestock.
I am more and more convinced that the only guarantee of quality in practice lies in the subsistence principle—that is, in the use of the product by the producer—a principle depreciated virtually out of existence by industrial agriculture. Indeed, it is sometimes offered as one of the benefits of industrial agriculture that farm families now patronize the supermarkets just like city people. On the other hand, it can be well argued that people who use their own products will be as concerned for quality as for quantity, whereas people who produce exclusively for the market will be mainly interested in quantity.
It will be noticed that production is not on my list of problems. The reason is that if the four problems I have dealt with are properly solved, production will not be a problem. Good production is merely the result of good farming.
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