the culture part of agriculture

January 4, 2017 The news of the kids’ deaths in Amarillo has fallen off the radar, as is typical with U.S. media. Maybe that’s why we don’t get tougher regulations on dangerous chemicals—we forget how dangerous they are. And some other drama takes over the air waves—today it was mostly about Donald’s tweets that apparently stopped Congress from gutting the ethics commission. That flash-bulb attention span that Americans have developed has stopped us from doing many good things, and allowed bad things to slip through unnoticed. Drip drip drip, destroying our democracy, our integrity, our culture. Because, no doubt about it, Americans have a culture, just like the peasants in South America. Ours always had a lot to do with government—the importance of voting, respect for the law, belonging to a caring community, a sense of public service that enhanced the worth of the individual. That’s a summary of American rural culture. Not too many people have written about the culture part of agriculture. Even though it’s the most important part of farm life. It’s common to find nostalgic writers launching into descriptions of the old family home place where they grew up, but that doesn’t nail it for most of us. Now we’re in a time and place where people move every few years and don’t really have a sense of their community. Closest I’ve seen in a while is a description from why people in fishing communities want to keep on fishing. It’s page 11 in a book called, Sharing the Ocean: You think about growing up in a family and community where fishing is all you know. As a kid you loved the kind of freedom you felt only on the water and you want your children to have the same opportunity if they choose it. The fishing life is rough and dangerous, yes, but with hard work it can support a family and maybe send your kids to college. For you, fishing is what makes sense of the world, it is the foundation of your identity… Substitute the word “farming” for the word “fishing,” and you’ve got it.