Food For Thought

I love working in a rural area. The rhythms of the year, the smell of the harvest, and the look of the fields as they grow touch my inner need for earth! I try to grow things in my garden, but often all I can get are weeds and tomatoes. If you cannot grow tomatoes, then there is something really wrong with you!

Farming is the base of existence. If we did not have grain and corn and beans and well, you know, there would be no people. The people I serve are the proverbial salt of the earth. One young person I know is so eager to become a farmer he even wears his farming gear to school. He is the coolest little kid I have ever known!

But here is the thing, we are losing farmers every day. The corporate farm is becoming the norm here on the plains. Now some people will say that a corporate farm is one that farms more than a 1000 acres, but here in the Northern Great Plains, a family farm is not less than a 1000 acres. A family needs that to survive even with other work off the farm! Even with that, family farms are almost a bygone and this is hurting our nation and our way of life. Every year since the mid 1900's more and more farmers pack it in and give up, and the farms keep getting bigger,the population of farmers keeps getting smaller, and large corporations take over more and more land. These formers tillers of the earth move to the densely populated urban area and become factory workers or greeters at Wal-Mart or contract laborers in the housing industry or something else, never to return to the land that is their root of existence.

These urban areas are getting larger and larger with all kinds of ethnicities grouping themselves together--the proverbial Melting Pot of America. The Latinos on one street, the Norwegians on another cul-de-sac, the Italians down this road, the Filipinos in this housing project, and on and on with no end in sight. The problem for our country is this is not new. It has happened before. The Roman Empire had the same thing happen right before it collapsed. The farms got larger with former keepers of the land moving to urban ghettos of similar ethnicities with strife and death and murder the norm.

Will we become another bygone empire? Or do we as a people of God have another choice? Food for thought.