{"id":49612,"date":"2019-11-14T09:43:56","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T14:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49612"},"modified":"2019-11-14T09:44:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T14:44:00","slug":"america-loves-the-idea-of-family-farms-thats-unfortunate-by-sarah-taber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49612","title":{"rendered":"America loves the idea of family farms. That\u2019s unfortunate. By Sarah Taber"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2019\/america-loves-the-idea-of-family-farms-thats-unfortunate-by-sarah-taber\/\">America loves the idea of family farms. That\u2019s unfortunate. By Sarah Taber<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Preface. As declining fossil fuels force more and more people back into being farmers, eventually 75 to 90% of the population, it would be much better for this to happen with family farms than gigantic mega-farms with workers who are slaves in all but name. This essay offers an alternative, collaborative worker-owned farming that has already been proven to work..&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Taber, S. 2019.\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2019\/06\/america-loves-the-idea-of-family-farms-thats-unfortunate.html?utm_source=undefined&amp;utm_medium=undefined&amp;utm_campaign=feed-part\"><strong>America loves the idea of family farms<\/strong><\/a><strong>. That\u2019s unfortunate. nymag.com<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Family farms are central to our nation\u2019s identity. Most Americans, even those who have never been on a farm, have strong feelings about the&nbsp;<em>idea<\/em>&nbsp;of family farms \u2014 so much that they\u2019re the one thing that all U.S. politicians agree on. Each election, candidates across the ideological spectrum roll out plans to save family farms \u2014 or give speeches about them, at least. From&nbsp;<em>Little House on the Prairie<\/em>&nbsp;to modern farmer\u2019s markets, family farms are also the core of most Americans\u2019 vision of what sustainable, just farming is supposed to look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But as someone who\u2019s worked in agriculture for 20 years and researched the history of farming, I think we need to understand something: Family farming\u2019s difficulties aren\u2019t a modern problem born of modern agribusiness. It\u2019s&nbsp;<em>never<\/em>&nbsp;worked very well. It\u2019s simply precarious, and it always has been. Idealizing family farms burdens real farmers with overwhelming guilt and blame when farms go under. It\u2019s crushing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wish we talked more openly about this. If we truly understood how rare it is for family farms to happen at all, never mind last multiple generations, I hope we could be less hard on ourselves. Deep down we all know that the razor-thin margins put families in impossible positions all the time, but we still treat it like it\u2019s the ideal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America loves the idea of family farms. That\u2019s unfortunate. By Sarah Taber Preface. As declining fossil fuels force more and more people back into being farmers, eventually 75 to 90% of the population, it would be much better for this to happen with family farms than gigantic mega-farms with workers who are slaves in all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[22374,11859,297,299,1912,27587],"class_list":["post-49612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-community-farming","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-family-farming","tag-farming","tag-food-production","tag-sarah-taber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49613,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49612\/revisions\/49613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}