What farmers value (Reflections on From the Farm to the Table, Ch. 3-7)

These chapters are stories, stories that "are more personal, more focused around values than around public policy," quoted at length (40).

"When people left the farm in the past, they did it under severely, very, very hardship circumstances...I don't live that life of hardship. I did. But I made my choice..." said Ron Scherbring, who now raises dairy heifers (68-69).
"Extension preaches that you have to get bigger, so now, instead of five hundred farms, there are fifty, and we don't need the extension agents anymore," said Lonny Dietz, who farms marginal land with the goal of restoring its ecological health (79).
"If it all becomes corporate farming, they're going to make a profit. But if they can see they're losing money by all this erosion, it might be corrected," said Dennis Rabe, who raises hogs for Niman Ranch (89).

The interviews published here introduce seven farmers who value stewardship (of soil, and aquifers, and animals), and entrepreneurship (i.e., experimenting, finding what works for them). They enjoy farming. They "want to prove it can be done--that you can make a good living on a small farm" (61). They value a sense of history. They value community involvement: "they will go to their churches, and be a part of their schools," hang out in the town's only cafe, and talk to customers at the farmers' market and members of their small CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) (74). They attend Farm Security Administration meetings to hear about the new farm bill; they work with the Department of Natural Resources, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. They know about "the rest of the world" (38). They attend Bread for the World luncheons and travel to Nicaragua to teach rotational grazing. They read books such as Pioneers Forever, by Marvin Simon, and The New Agrarianism, by Eric Freyfogle. Their resources include university researchers and economists like John Ikerd and Dick Levins, and organizations such as the Southeast Minnesota Ag Alliance, the Sustainable Farming Association, the Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Land Stewardship Project, the American Farm Bureau, the National Farmers' Union, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Southeast Minnesota Food Network, and the Experiment in Rural Cooperation.

The interviewees Holthaus chose to include do not speak highly of Cargill, Monsanto, Conagra, and agribusiness in general. It comes down to a final question of values: money. These farmers do value profitability, efficiency, and productivity, just never to the exclusion of stewardship, and entrepreneurship, and history, and community.

"Is profit bad in agriculture? Is profit the only thing we should embrace in agriculture? Of course, you have both ends of the spectrum," said Scherbring (67).
"We have to make a living or we'll lose the place. But I don't make all my decisions on the basis of money. If I had to do that, I wouldn't farm," said Mike Rupprecht, a beef grower who also raises chickens (61).
"When one urban participant in an Experiment meeting in Lanesboro in 2002 suggested that farming was 'a way of life,' all the farmers nodded in accord, but their response was deeply qualified: 'Well, yes...but it sure is a business too.'" (66).
"Your question is, who is going to benefit the most from this farm program? The chemical and seed companies, and the person that buys the corn...And there's no way to educate the people fast enough to stop it," said Rabe (87).

In sum, these chapters give the perspective of the farmers who say, "I could probably make more money if I farmed in other ways, but I think this is the right way," and "We're interested in healthy soil, healthy animals, and healthy humans" (105).