Anonymous RURAL VOICES

What Real People Say

1. What does the environmental community, and the community at large, need to know about your occupation?

That farmers aren't just rednecks out here raping the land.
That farms are caught by some serious realities.
That there are some real hypocrisies among environmentalists who don't mind riding jet planes around the world to environmental conferences but point fingers at farmers for using chemicals.
That farm bills generally only apply to large corporate farms and rarely help smaller family farms.
That farming is not a John Denver song but a real tough, and oftentimes exhausting, way to make a living.
That there is only so much land that is suitable to grow food on. Once that land is paved and industrially developed, it is gone. A subdivision is the "last crop."
Urban development, or sprawl, makes farming very difficult. Land prices soar, complaints are made about smell and large slow farm equipment clogging the roads. Many problems.
We are not "running out of water". The amount of water on the planet remains the same. What changes is quality and distribution of water.
Regulated furbearer trapping does not diminish populations. Trapping takes surplus population. These creatures would die anyway.
Cows, by eating available marsh vegetation, are more a limit of wetland furbearers than trappers.
That farms provide the majority of good land, open space, habitat and food for both local and migratory wildlife.

2. What brings you the greatest joy, satisfaction and personal nourishment from your work?

Knowing that I am a steward of this little plot of sunshine.
Being on the marsh every day before dawn, watching the world awaken from a place of beauty.
Working with plants, animals, weather and the seasons.
Being a part of a 9,000 year old ancient ritual.

3. What is most difficult?

The feeling that I am always fighting something, be it weeds, county weed control agencies, encroaching urbanization, predators, pests, wild herbivores such as Gophers,higher production costs, or poor markets. Just the everyday keeping up with things. It is always a fight.
Knowing that my children will not want to continue the rigors of an agricultural life, that I am the end of the line.
Hearing people complain about the high price of food when we, the world’s richest nation also have the world's lowest food prices.
Having to work with poisonous, dangerous substances; herbicides, solvents, machinery fluids.
No breaks between chores, big work, small wages.
Finding qualified, affordable labor for hire.

4. What conditions are necessary for your work to be sustainable into a distant future?

Markets.
Ever changing knowledge of weeds, pests and numerous forms of interference.
How to economically maintain infrastructure that was last tended in the 50's and '60's when farming was a bit more lucrative.
Understanding how to flex with 100-year systems and ever-changing realities of economics and affordability.
Sustaining a long-term, reasonably accurate view of what changes must be made to remain viable.
Water.
A knowledgeable public that wants local agriculture to remain a part of their society.

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