New Hope for Old Farmers: Americans Long for Life 'Down on the
Farm'
Imagine my surprise when I read an article in the April 2005
edition of Reader's Digest informing me that membership in
Future Farmers of America (FFA) has hit a 22-year record high.
Since 1994, the number of farmers' markets around the country
also has more than doubled, the article said.
I find these two bits of information especially interesting
because small family farms have been disappearing from the
countryside at an alarming rate over the past 30 years.
According to statistics from the U.S. Census of Agriculture and
the American Farm Bureau Federation, since 1969, the United
States has lost 85 percent of its dairy farms.
Why do I care that the United States has lost so many dairy
farms? I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, which has always
been known as America's Dairyland. Except that today, in areas
where there used to be farms all up and down the roads, there
isn't a single farm left. During the same time period in which
the United States lost 85 percent of its dairy farms, Wisconsin
has lost 70 percent of its dairy farms.
So what is going on here?
Family farms have disappeared. Subdivisions have taken over what
were once cornfields and hayfields and pastures. Creameries have
been abandoned or converted to other uses. Feed mills have been
torn down to make room for parking lots. And yet -- FFA has the
highest membership that it's had for the last 22 years? And in
the past 10 years, the number of farmers' markets has more than
doubled?
The Reader's Digest article speculates that the reason for the
increases in FFA membership and farmers' markets is that as the
United States has lost more and more farms, and as more and more
people live in cities or suburbs or subdivisions, farm life has
become a fascinating subject for those who have never
experienced it.
I have discovered through my own research that agricultural
tourism is on the rise, as well. It used to be that if you
wanted to visit a farm, you had to have a grandma and grandpa or
an aunt and uncle who owned a farm. Now all you have to do is go
to the Internet, type in "farm tours" on Google, and websites
come up that direct you to farms which have been converted to
bed-and-breakfasts, farms that conduct tours of their day-to-day
operations, farms that have been made into museums, and farms
that give hay rides and have pumpkin patches and corn mazes.
Through a series of political, cultural and social decisions,
Americans created an atmosphere that forced small family farmers
to go out of business. Although now that the family farmers are
all but gone, Americans have decided they are interested in
knowing more about life on the farm.
What's next? One-room country schools? Or how about little white
country churches?
Be that as it may, the increased interest in farming could mean
new life for the small farms still in existence. Perhaps the
adult children who left because there was no future in farming
will return -- not to farm the land and milk cows, but to turn
those farms into bed and breakfasts, museums or to grow pumpkin
patches, construct corn mazes and give hay rides.
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