The Death of Farming
Real farms have all but vanished, while just 10 conglomerates produce nearly everything you eat. This is one case in which ignorance can literally kill you.
As we did just yesterday, every winter weekend that I’m not in NYC, my family and I drive North from Toronto, through Ontario’s so-called “Greenbelt”—a protected swath of agricultural farmland—to ski. Every time we do, it seems that yet one more farm is abandoned, its infrastructure boarded up or falling apart—in ruin.
As a photographer and architect I am drawn to these things, often sneaking in to document them before they’re gone. Snapshots in time, the barn structures I photograph often fall within the season.
The collapse of barns is an apt proxy for what’s happening to farming at large. That is, it is disappearing, moving from the land to the factory; and from dirt-filled fingernails to pristine board rooms.
The farm… is dead.
Farming by the Numbers
Look at the graph above. Nearly all of us were farmers 200 years ago. By 1900, half of us remained so. By 2000, it was just 2.6%. Today, that figure stands at half of what it was just 20 years ago: now, 1.4% of Americans are farmers—and not the kind you picture in your head. Half are undocumented workers, earning less than they would for nearly any other job in the nation. Beyond the loss of the farms themselves, those who still earn a living that way face other pressures. According to the Guardian:
“Those who harvest, pack and sell us our food have the least power: at least half of the 10 lowest-paid jobs are in the food industry. Farms and meat processing plants are among the most dangerous and exploitative workplaces in the country.
Overall, only 15 cents of every dollar we spend in the supermarket goes to farmers. The rest goes to processing and marketing our food.”
