By shopping at farmers markets, we’re encouraging, supporting better use of land and better farming. Years ago, right after WWII, it was impossible to find organic food. It was the consumer who turned that around. It will be the consumers again, who will change agricultural practices.
We came across food Journalist Mark Bittman’s column that was originally published in the New York Times, on June 10. Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting on this article:
From Mark Bittman:
Just about everyone agrees that we need more farmers. Currently, nearly 30 percent are 65 or older, and fewer than 10 percent are under 35. The number of farmers is likely to fall further with continuing consolidation and technological innovation.
But displacement of farmers is neither desirable nor inevitable. We need to put more young people on smaller farms, the kinds that will grow nourishing food for people instead of food that sickens us or yields products intended for animals or cars.
The problem is land, which is often prohibitively expensive. Farmland near cities is prized by developers and the wealthy looking for vacation homes, hobby farms or secure investments. Many farmers have no choice but to rent land for a year or two before being asked to move and start all over, because the purchase of even the smallest plot is out of their reach.
There are credible efforts to provide farmworkers new landopportunities, like trusts for preserving farmland. There are also dozens of federalstateand programs aimed at helping farmers get started, as well as farm business incubators like the one run by Glynwood in the Hudson River Valley. But the barriers to obtaining land remain high.
According to this article, a new bill proposed by Representatives Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat, and Chris Gibson, a New York Republican, and devised with input from the National Young Farmers Coalition, calls for forgiving the balance of student loans of those who spent 10 years as farmers and made loan payments during that time.
Of course, those who may object to adding farmers to the loan forgiveness list. But let’s face the elephant in the room, what is stopping us from investing in a better kind of farming with a new generation of farmers willing to do it?
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