Political weakness. Perhaps most important for the twenty-first century, a powerful agro-industrial sector has developed, made up of a few international grain traders, a few transnational chemical companies, and a few transnational food processors, who directly benefit from high volume-low priced agricultural products. This has occurred as rural areas have lost population and, especially since the one-man-one-vote supreme court ruling of 1964(?), political power. Federal agricultural policy is driven far more by concern for international trade than by concern for the vitality of rural communities.
Outside the discourse. At the beginning of the new millennium, farmers and residents of small towns find themselves almost entirely outside of the dominant discourse. Virtually all the media comes out of and speaks to urban consumers.
The rural, as D. Gorton has noted, becomes a place to contemplate, as scenery. It becomes a place for recreation and leisure. Other industries can locate their factories with their fumes and effluents in areas most of us never pass by. But farming is different: The poisons and the smells and the dirt associated with industrial production spread out over the open landscape. The aesthetic and health concerns of urban dwellers overwhelm farm realities. Farming is offensive to the townsperson.
Except for the ersatz farms served up through agro-tourism, on the fringes of the expanding cities. And the organic farms that are creeping into the interstices of the decaying farms in hailing distance of the major metropolitan areas.
continued
Outside the discourse. At the beginning of the new millennium, farmers and residents of small towns find themselves almost entirely outside of the dominant discourse. Virtually all the media comes out of and speaks to urban consumers.
The rural, as D. Gorton has noted, becomes a place to contemplate, as scenery. It becomes a place for recreation and leisure. Other industries can locate their factories with their fumes and effluents in areas most of us never pass by. But farming is different: The poisons and the smells and the dirt associated with industrial production spread out over the open landscape. The aesthetic and health concerns of urban dwellers overwhelm farm realities. Farming is offensive to the townsperson.
Except for the ersatz farms served up through agro-tourism, on the fringes of the expanding cities. And the organic farms that are creeping into the interstices of the decaying farms in hailing distance of the major metropolitan areas.
continued
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