After reading this line, I find a feeling of tension. It reminds me of another saying about how the truth hurts. In our readings, I’ve found some of the things that I am learning about in regards to food very shocking. I did not know how food and the distance it travels had an effect on our well-being and health. What I mean by this is that Berry talks about how industrial agriculture now replaces people with machines and how we depend on fossil fuels to create and transport food to our plates on page 63. I have never really thought about food and people not farming as a loss of a skill that can be liberating and healthy. In our modern day and age, we are always talking about creating new jobs, new green jobs, and I wonder what it would be like to reimagine/recreate jobs that we have always needed such as farming, and created modern farming? What would that look like? Could we create technology that could keep farms close to us and food close to us? Would that mean figuring out how to put more gardens in cities? Could that mean creating a watering system that could water our plants depending on the weather and time of the day so that we can also be pursuing other interests such as computers or art? After all, we do need farms and growers in order to get food. So yes, I am joyful because I know that there is food in the world, but after learning some more facts, it is both disheartening and hopeful knowing that there is a growing concern for how we are getting our food.
In my work thus far, I have found it very liberating knowing all of the care that goes into growing and harvesting food. I love strawberries, and I recently learned about how they are harvested and how they are sold. That to me is a joy… knowing how the care and work that brought my food to me.
I love how you described farming as a potential source of joy and health, and especially that you suggested the possibility of farms as an opportunity for creativity and growth. It seems to me that in our society farming is often viewed as a less worthy and respectable job/way to help the economy, while positions in large companies are highly respected and aspired to. For example, if I decided to become a farmer, I think many people would be disappointed/feel I was wasting my potential. And your idea about bringing farms to the cities would reduce distance food would have to travel as well as help people become more familiar with their food and where it is coming from, which is incredibly important.
hiya Mandy!
I think that you touch on a key point in the end of your post: one cannot fully understand and appreciate farming without having experienced it for him/herself. Having grown up in the suburbs, I had a garden in my yard, but my family didn’t make a big effort to grow any of our own food. Until recently, I knew very little about the processes of planting, caring for, and harvesting plants (and I still know only a fraction of all the information out there). But through occasionally working on the farm at Middlebury as well as spending a lot of time gardening in the fall, I started to understand the importance of the connection between the food we eat and not only how it’s grown, but also those who grow it. Maybe if more people could experience what you described – learning about the care, effort, and beauty that goes into cultivating a healthy farm – some of the problems that you bring up in the beginning of your post may have more realistic, uplifting solutions.