Ruminations - Is Bigger Really Better?

Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under President Nixon from December 1971 to October 1976, promoted policies that favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to programs designed to protect small farmers.  He essentially said, "Get Big or Get Out."  I was 10 years old at the time and much too young to be concerned with such things.  That thinking set into motion what seemed to be an unstoppable wave, and end to a way of life.  The death of the small family farm.

I was driving down the road the other day and something caught my eye that got me to thinking about this.  Look at the photo below.  You know what that is?

Those are Butler bins.  For those who don't know these are what harvested rice is put into in order to be dried and stored until sold and sent to the rice mills.  We had a small set up bins like this on our farm.  These bins seem like toys compared to the bins of today.  We eventually got rid of these little Butler bins and replace them with bigger ones that seemed grandiose compared to the little Butlers.  Oh my goodness.  With the sizes of the combines today, one combine load of rice would surely fill a Butler bin.

Once the old obsolete Butler bins were gone, the reminder of them were the circular slabs upon which sat the bins.  As kids, we'd keep those slabs swept and clean, because we used them as pads to park plows and planters and other equipment.

The bigger bins held more rice.  As I drive around today, I realized that our bigger bins seem like toys compared to the million dollar structures being put in today.  I'm told that they are computer operated and can be programmed by your phone.  You don't even need to get out of your truck.  You simply push buttons on your phone and magic happens.  

There are a lot of differences in farms of yesterday and today.  Farms of yesterday required people.  Farmers would walk the levees with a shovel resting on their shoulder, looking for muskrat holes that caused leaks.  That shovel came in mighty handy when you encountered a cottonmouth water moccasin aggressively coiled atop the levee, not wanting to yield his ground to you.  You always had to have your eyes opened for such things.

Springtime involved crop duster pilots flying overhead in AgCats planting rice in flooded fields.  Early spring is mostly silent now as a lot of rice is dry planted.  Instead of water leveling and working the land, a lot of grass is simply 'burned down' by Round Up.  Back then, you'd drive on the back roads and farmers would come upon one other and kill their trucks in the middle of the road, roll down the window (you would actually roll them down) and talk about what the crop was looking like, what kind of weather was coming, and the hopes of higher prices for rice.

The back roads were bustling with people on ditching tractors, old pickups or three wheelers, checking irrigation wells, fixing busted levees, scouting for weeds and disease.  Now things are different.  The workers you come across are imported from a different country.  They speak a different language.  They don't have familial ties to the land.  The small farming communities once had machine shops and parts houses that served the local farmer.  Farmers dropped by to trade and drink coffee and talk about hopes of a better crop next year.  FFA clubs were popular in the high schools, people proudly wearing those blue corduroy jackets. 

Much of the community was involved and intertwined in agriculture.  It was important to the identity of the town.  Things have changed.  The old storefronts down Main Street are either shuttered or have changed, serving different clientele.  You almost expect to see tumbleweeds rolling down the road.  Many of the old farming families' children have moved off to the city or at least commute to the city to work.  Dollar Generals, subdivisions, and solar panels now sit on once productive farm land. 

The machines have gotten bigger, enabling fewer and fewer people to manage larger and larger parcels of land.  The old John Deere 4020 tractors that once were the workhorse of the farm now sit rusting in the tall grass, looking like a boy's play toy compared to the behemoths that now pull huge implements across the ground. The capital involved in farming is prohibitive for most people.  The family farms of yesteryear are large corporate farms now.  Foreign governments are buying US farmland now.  Get big or get out has been achieved.  Mr. Butz' policies have come to fruition, a wild success some might say.

But I beg to differ.  Sure, farming is more efficient.  But what's the real cost?  The small family farms that were the glue that held communities together are rapidly disappearing.  The children reared on those farms, learning work ethic and civic pride have left, never to return.  The way of life we grew up with is gone, changed, like it never existed.  A distant memory in the cobwebs of your mind.  But some of us still remember what a good life it was.  Is bigger really better?  The answer, in my humble opinion, would be an emphatic NO.