The old ways is the best ways…or is it?

The two articles we read this week seemed to not really like the idea that some people now believe that Proverbs may not be the end all of wisdom when it comes to farming. The specific proverb they quote actually pretty much describes exactly what modern day farmers do just on a giant scale. I’m not sure how extensive the writer of this article’s experience with farmers and farming but most of what they say we should do, they do. One of their biggest points is managing land by planting different crops or not planting crops in that particular field at all. Most successful farmers do this every year, in fact most farmers that are in my area leave forests or even plant them to retain the soil quality. They describe conforming to the contours of the land, most farmers do this plowing their fields according to the hills and valleys of their land. Basically they focus on the negative parts of agriculture, and really mostly the parts that aren’t ecological, and ignore the positives. The author describes how our current system places the control of much of our land in the hands of a small group of people and how it favors profits over anything else. These complaints have little to do with ecology or pollution, it seems that they see a system that they do not like for political reasons and attempt to use ecology as a reason to change it. The reason this is a problem is mostly due to the fact that having an economic issue with our system is completely valid but they don’t use their actual complaints as reasons we should change our system. Making the argument that consolidating wealth is detrimental to most people and our overall society is a completely valid. There are also many ideas that simply don’t work with our society (e.g. we shouldn’t sell land or houses). These ideals come from an ancient culture that had values much different than our own. One idea that the author criticized was the practice of buying and selling land instead of passing it to the next of kin. The ability to buy and sell land, and the preference to do so, actually helps distribute wealth as there are very few individuals with enough money to purchase an entire farm. This results in the seller parceling out land which more people are able to purchase and subsequently farm however they please, which is exactly what the author wants. It’s when farmers pass the farm down through their family that problems with consolidated wealth occur (i.e the landed gentry of the Middle Ages). Land as a commodity allows both individuals to own small plots of land to produce higher quality and more niche foods, and large corporations to run factory farms to produce more affordable staple foods for the masses. Going back to the old ways of doing things may fix some of the problems our modern day society has created, but they’ll bring back the problems that our modern day society fixed. Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward but this time going backward isn’t the way to move forward.