I've been reading a bit of the classic book, The Contrary Farmer, by Gene Logsdon. Today I just want to type up a longish quote from the book, which I think is wonderful...
This 'reconnecting' [of farmer to consumer] so well exemplified by
farmers' markets in the cities, makes for a healthy economic system. Human
beings are mostly rather wonderful creatures in their personal relationships
with spouses, their children, their parents, their friends, their comrades at
work. So when food shopping becomes a direct experience between the farmer
and the consumer, mutual solicitude is invariably generated. The
farmer wants the customer to be pleased, and the customer, so served, wants
the farmer to continue in business. Farmers' markets thus represent
one of the few remaining examples of genuine capitalism left in this
country.
Compare that to the lowly-paid hired hand feeding ten thousand
steers knee deep in shit at a big feedlot owned by millionaires for
tax-dodging purposes. Do you think this worker gives a damn whether the
meat he is helping to produce pleases some faraway urban consumer?
Likely as not, he despises urbanites in general because he knows they make
a lot more money than he does and can afford to buy the steaks his labor
produces while he eats hamburger. This kind of farming is not
free-enterprise capitalism but captive-enterprise socialism.
Comments
I live in IL now, but spent 10 years of my youth (1981-1991) in Chaska, MN, and then school in St. Paul. I love reading about MN.
I'm a former homeschooling parent of two who now runs a very large and very popular farmers' market, and I have as big a garden as I can manage. I also like hanging my laundry on the line...
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Lisa