Another reader responds to my post regarding the dangers of large food processing plants:
Your article about food supply issues has me thinking. In my lifetime I have seen family farms transition to parts of larger operations. My family’s property is no longer farmed by family, but by a tenant who is renting many acres to make his living more lucrative. We, as a society, have become less and less responsible for our own survival resources and dependent upon others for necessary goods and services.
80 years ago (pulling a number out of my hat), many people living in rural areas grew and preserved their own food, including animals that provided milk, eggs and meat. Slaughtering of animals was an experience, to be sure. I remember my daddy dressing out a hog in our barn that he had ‘grown.’ I helped my grandparents dress chickens. We used to take a hog or beef to a slaughter house in our area for processing and then rent a freezer locker in which to store our meat.
To spare you my walk down memory lane, people have made decisions that relinquished their accountability for their resources to others for a price they were willing to pay. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. All of this has occurred in the guise of free enterprise. I can find a privately run meat market in a town 30 miles away. While I’m not likely to go to WalMart for my Easter ham, I did go to my local grocery store and buy a Smithfield ham. I don’t see how it would be possible to regulate the packing plants that have evolved over time to be what they are. It hurts me to see the farmers mowing their tomato crop and dumping milk because the COVID situation has drastically curtailed the market for their product. This will undoubtedly impact me, the land owner, who depends upon income from grain crops. The current situation is devastating, but I don’t see how current industry can be regulated to go backwards, for that seems to be what your regulation would require.
People have given up so much independence and self sufficiency. They can’t prepare their own food, maintain their own nails and hair, or manage their own children. It has become a house of cards. Regulation might be better to require classes to equip students with skills in food preparation, food growing, clothing construction, etc. We did that 50 years ago. I believe students would be genuinely interested in these topics. In order to retool anything, that is where a change will gain the most traction.
I’m sure I have simply served to frustrate you, but I have shared my thinking, however disjointed. I am retiring at the end of this school year after I’ve put all my last 4 weeks of instruction online.
I think my reader thinks I want to go back a little further than I want to go, but perhaps I misunderstand the nature of our food processing. While the consolidation of family farms into corporate farms is a separate and serious issue, I’m thinking about processing the food, such as slaughter and other activities. Right now, it appears we have a few huge plants to do it, and when more than just a few goes down, our food supply becomes imperiled.
It seems to me that we either find a way to make those plants impervious to natural disaster, or we replace these big plants with a host of smaller plants that are geographically dispersed.
Insofar as self-sufficiency goes, there are so many trade-offs. The Do It Yourself-er (DIYer) has a long tradition in this country, and the thought of being the master of your own house has its necessary charms, yet it’s undeniable that someone who fixes their own toilet or installs their own light fixtures has just deprived a plumber or an electrician of some income, which translates to a tiny hit in the GDP.
And, judging from the workmanship from previous owners of my own home, of dubious or even dangerous quality – another tradeoff.
The DIYer has also deprived themselves of time that could have been dedicated to improving on their own specialty in their own vocation.
Yet, too much specialization has its own tradeoffs in terms of development of a balanced personality, of knowledge outside of a specialty etc.
I think the country must have, and to some extent always has, an ongoing debate over how much specialization vs ability to master disparate tasks is good for the citizenry. And I have no idea if there is even an answer to the question, except that the well-rounded person with an active, inquisitive mind and an active physical life is probably more of an asset to society than the hyper-specialized person … who wins a Nobel prize in Medicine.
Sigh.
