Making Small Farms Less Exceptional.

Right now the kind of small farming system we operate here in the valley is fairly unusual on a national scale.

Its compact, purposeful, and largely pleasurable to work, on a human scale that makes it feel manageable.

But its also productive of good nutritous food, its profitable and it benefits both the local wildlife, and human population.

So why isn't there more of this sort of thing going on then ?? 

if its so very good , why isnt nearly everyone doing it this way ?


How do we encourage the proliferation of smaller agroecological farms , producing wholesome food for their local populations?

Making a living through shorter, less extractive supply chains. 


There seems to be a measure of broad agreement that the food and farming system needs to be adapted to better serve our real food needs, the environment, the people already working in the industry, and in particular to help mitigate the climate crisis.

Which roughly translates as food and farming needs to stop being a net contributor to climate change and where possible, even start to be part of the solution, through intelligent management techniques, of soil, and many other elements of the system. 

The methodologies of agroecology - that is the application of craft skill, knowledge, observation, and experience, combined in a complex system will necessarily require more humans to be involved.

But right now the number of active farmers and food producers is decreasing. 

This is against what needs to happen if we are to achieve our ambitious goals of net zero carbon.  

And people need meaningful occupation - its hard wired into our psychological well being. 

Plus rest and time off too.. Something many farmers don't get right now, and that's a shame as well. 

Over the last five or so years I've been delving deeper into what is getting in the way of all this generally better way of doing food and farming .

And alongside more practical matters I've come to realise that a lot of this is a problem of mindset as much as it is material.

It may seem far removed from national or global politics , but the way we view ourselves as food citizens massively impacts how we regard our food and farming systems.

Is bigger always better??  The 'market' and its endless grasping for growth of profits seems to think so.

Economies of scale that arise from getting bigger are often held up as a reason for favouring an expansionist mindset.

Maybe if you're running a biscuit factory . or even biscuit making 'Empire' then this perhaps  holds true.

However farms rely on natural systems - the laws of nature even for their survival.

Even the most chemically , and machinery dependent farming operation still has to rely mainly on 'external' inputs for its survival - solar gain , rainwater, and preexisting soil in which we grow our plants - whether for direct consumption - or to feed the animals on whose products we will eventually dine.

There's no escaping these natural realities.

And if we try to force these systems beyond their natural capacity they will break down.

So we have to respect 'the laws of nature' - not necessarily in a 'cosmic' Gaia  way - although that thinking has some useful allegory - but more just because that's how the real world actually is.

The business of farming is ultimately the engagement with the building blocks of life -

- in order to make more building blocks (food) for human bodies - 

- and that food should nourish us in all ways if it's fit for purpose. 

So chemistry, biology, physics, are all the fundamentals with which we play - but in order for the play to go on we have to respect the players, the ecology that supports basic life. 

Soil microbes upwards. .

Add into these essentials, human nature , human psychology , our concept of time - our basic needs for security of food shelter and well being - -  then we have a very complex system.

In many cases we've tried to over-  simplify these systems , control them even in the hope that they can be moulded to our will.

And what is that 'will' right now?

Well as farmers the current thinking is that we are supposed to be purely 'business' people, like any other.

Bills to pay, books to balance etc etc.

Two of the ideas i was given at agricultural college - 

"The farm is a factory floor, just like any other"

and

"Soil is just a substrate in which we put plant roots to support and then feed those plants from a bag"

But when i was at (conventional) Agricultural college all those decades ago I'd already been contaminated by these "organic" ideas, from other places, and encounters. 

Perhaps using so many chemicals wasn't a good idea for many reasons - both in the short and the long term.

The effects on animal and human health were already being seen, and talked about.

The effects on wildlife, and broadscale ecologies were also visible.

But still, even now chemical agriculture is seen as 'conventional' - not using all these inputs is the outlier the 'alternative' 

How do we turn this around ?

Is it possible to revise this way of thinking ??

If we don't what will happen??

Ironically, the farm here makes a profit - whereas larger neighbours are struggling -

Why is this ??

 Who, or what, is extracting the goodness from these medium scaled farms ??

If what happens here is so great - again why doesn't more of it happen elsewhere?

As many questions, as answers. 

But still plenty of hope, and collective energy to find these solutions. 

It's complicated. 

In a way - it has to be - 

- If it isn't we're probably doing it wrong ...