A Good Farmer?

Tumbledown Farmer is pleased that the Star continues to publish stories that question the sale of farmland. But that was not the emphasis on the front page of the Business Section this Sunday ("Attached to the Land," Indianapolis Star, July 30, 2006). Sure, farming is business, but for the better farmers it is also a calling, so there was much with which to argue. Tumbledown Farmer found especially aggravating the assumption by Roger DuMond (Kova Fertilizer agronomist) trumpeted by Norm Heikens (reporter) that "good farmers...farm a lot of acres in a mechanized manner." The implication drawn by the reporter is that "poorer soils...breed a less prosperous, more cautious farmer." The statement could have been accepted as merely descriptive (perhaps even received with some literary approbation if the article had approached the classic descriptiveness of, say, James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; see August 25, 2006, NY Times article on the artistry of Walker Evans), except that it was paired so closely with the previous statement as to castigate the farmers with small holdings of lesser quality land as "bad farmers" (not directly stated, but certainly implied).

Tumbledown has to ask, do "good farmers" really "lunge" at the chance to sell the most fertile soils and "bad farmers" hesitate to sell poorer soils?

Again, the too prevalent assumption that "the exclusive function of the farmer is production and that his major discipline is economics" goes unchallenged. (Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony, "Discipline and Hope," p. 127) Perhaps that is excusable in a business page article, but I hope not. The article betrayed a commitment to efficiency and specialization in agriculture (another word for a destructive exploitation of the land) that exalts annual production and industrial degredation of the land over the maintenance of fertility. The article applauds the quick courage of a few big farmers whose lack of attachment to the land they farm is evident. And diminishes the courage of the small farmers "whose allegiance to their land, continuing and deepening in association from one generation to another, would be the motive and guarantee of good care." (ibid., p. 93; see also pp. 91-92). It takes courage to farm poor land well.

Tumbledown also asks how can it be "good" for the richest Indiana farmland to be underneath a Honda plant? How "good" can a community remain that not only allows, but welcomes and applauds, the sale of the richest farmland not to the best farmers, but to manufacturing plants? Are there not urban wastelands in Indianapolis that are good enough to pave over for such factories? (Or sports arenas?)

Tumbledown Farmer thinks the reporter should have quoted Confucius to the fertilizer salesman: "The best fertilizer on any farm is the footsteps of the owner." Bad soil can be made better with the addition of humus. Give "good" farmers, the kind who become "attached" to their land and reluctant to sell, time and a supportive community and their "bad" land will improve. "On the other hand, if shiftless greedy men have exploited it [or sold it to Honda], there will be little left that is any longer worth anything either to the owner or to the nation." (Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley, "The World within the Earth," p. 156)

"A good farmer, a 'live' farmer is not one who goes into the field simply to get the job of plowing completed because he must first turn over the soil in order to plant the crops that will bring him in a little money." Instead, he walks the ground and "sees the humus in his good earth and counts the earthworms...[and] knows that out of the soil comes everything." (ibid., pp. 157-158).

The "good" farmer is firmly attached to the land she farms.