Americans aren’t eating any less food than before, but fewer than ever are in the business of growing or raising that food.
Family-run farms will soon be a thing of the past, judging by current trends. A nonprofit organization called Food and Water Watch published its study of factory-scale farms, documenting the falling number of family-scale farms.
Across Michigan, for instance, more than 4,000 families operated small-scale farms back in 1997. That fell to 2,500 family farms in 2007, and below 2,000 in 2017. The numbers are similar across the country: About half of the families farming 20 years ago have sold out to bigger farms.
Food and Water Watch worries about the impacts on the environment, the animals, and the people who eat the produce and the meat. Those impacts are real, but they perhaps pale in comparison to the cultural loss in rural America.
Towns and counties built around farm families are emptying out, and the culture in them is crumbling.
A hundred years ago, most Americans lived in rural communities, according to the Census Bureau. By 1990, the rural population had been halved, to less than 25%. In the last Census (2010), the percentage was less than 20%.
The growth of suburbs and the recent renaissance of U.S. cities are factors in this emptying of rural America. But the disappearance of the local farming economy is at the heart of this. And ruthless modern “efficiency” is at the heart of this.
Farm technology makes farmworkers more productive than in the past. Farm families, like all families, are smaller than in the past. And farm land is more valuable than ever.
“It used to be,” Iowa farmer Jerry McLaughlin told me over a pancake breakfast in the shrinking town of Imogene, “they farmed their … 300 acres, and they raised 6, 7, 8, 10 kids. Now, on farms 3, 4, 5 times that size, they raise one or two kids.”
So when Farmer Bob passes away, his sons sell the farm and move to the city. This isn’t a new story, of course, but as it continues apace, and as corporations swallow more family farms, the story of the family farm may be in its final chapter.
