small farms

"'Big business is killing small farming' wrote George Monbiot in the Guardian (June 10 2008). We find ourselves on the verge of a global food crisis. Key crops such as wheat and rice are in short supply and food prices are increasing by the day. It used to be that the West looked on with shame when the poor in Africa experience a shortage of food and are in need of aid. But now, it could soon become a reality that the modernised West also gets to experience first hand the impact of being short of food. Who will come to our aid?

Monbiot argues convincingly for the importance of small scale farming if we are to try and deal with the global food crisis. As he points out, numerous studies have revealed that small family farms produce a greater yield per hectare than large corporate farms, and can be up to 20 times more productive. After all, the family members of a small farm typically care far more about the land and the results from toiling it, than a agricultural worker employed by a large company, and the farming methods used on a family farm use far less fossil fuels and have far less of an impact on the environment.

But still agribusiness dominates farming and this seems set to increase as major agricultural food corporations such as Cargill, ADM, and Bunge set out to establish themselves throughout the world. This looks unlikely to change as governments refuse to shape policy to support and encourage small scale agriculture. As I heard an old-time farmer in East Anglian recently remark: 'It’s just one big tractor now and a thousand acres. There is nobody on the land today.' In a letter to the Guardian (June 16 2008) in support of Monbiot's argument, Robin Maynard from the The Soil Association notes that in Great Britain '12 farmers and 37 farm workers have left the land on average everyday for the past 60 years.' With them the skills and knowledge of working the land are lost too. In East Anglia alone the number of people employed in agriculture fell from 142, 225 in 1950 to 56, 819 in 2000.

The world is growing short of food and prices are rising at their fastest in 17 years. But still the small farms continue to close down. Clearly, there is something drastically wrong with the agricultural system. These photographs are from a number of recent farm sales in East Anglia. "

(Justin Partyka)

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cada vez mais pelo small farming, somos tão iguais em todo o lado.
Justin Partyka, fotógrafo de gente e de objectos iguais aqui e lá.