Food for Thought

I was listening to someone speaking on the radio the other night, and I heard a perspective that I had not considered before.

A point the speaker was making was that for a long time now in this country we have thought that bigger is better when it comes to farms. Fewer people produce all of our food now because of modern machines, pesticides, fertilizers and the other modern inventions. Achieving the economies of scale has created a number of hotly debated topics.

In order to be more efficient, things like huge barns have been built where thousands of pigs or chickens or cattle are kept in close quarters, force feeding them and not letting them run loose and exercise, making it efficient to get them to the weight for slaughter more quickly. Large operations like this also produce tons of waste per day, filling whole reservoirs in heavily concentrated areas.

Out in the fields where row crops like soybeans, wheat and corn are grown, efficiency is enhanced by huge doses of pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation and large equipment, which makes it possible for a few people to raise food crops on hundreds or thousands of acres.

The questions of the wisdom of genetic engineering and modern farming methods have been written about elsewhere, and it is easy to find more details if you wish.

The question of size alone is the part that strikes me as a new perspective. There is a current movement which you have heard about that favors supporting more local farmers, both organic and non-organic, with the idea behind it being that food that is grown closer to home will be fresher because it does not have to be transported great distances. And if the local farmers are managing a smaller plot of land, some of the better tasting produce might also be a result of their careful attention to all the things going on with their land, large and small, and that is how they get their results, tending a smaller operation and watching it very closely.

Right now lots of people are concerned about jobs, particularly the aspects of job security and meaningful work. Maybe it was not such a bad idea when most farms were smaller and it took more people to grow enough food for everyone. There are smaller farmers now who make a good living because they are known for the quality of their produce, honey, meats and dairy. There are quite a number of smaller vineyards all over this country producing good wines.

High quality goods can come from small operations where the owner has an active role in the process and a local crew of people helps tend to the work.

I, like you, get my food and drink from a number of sources, large and small. A combination of all these sources will continue to be needed.

This example poses the question for each of us about when is it good to be big and when is it good to be small?

Whatever your business is, do you want to grow it in a way that you run it personally, and it is only as large as you can handle? Or is your dream to franchise it, or hire others and delegate it to them, or simply grow it to a certain size and sell it?

Size does matter. Each of us will have to answer that question for ourselves, and each kind of business has different factors that contribute to our considerations about optimum size. How is our quality of life affected by these decisions?

Making a living by doing something we enjoy is the optimal situation, and that certainly is influenced by the answers to these questions.