Small Farmer/ Big Farmer
There is a very interesting dynamic playing out in the world of farming. Big farmers, who have large quantities of land and who run a big scale conventional farming business are beginning to interact with small market gardeners.
I have personal experience of this. I am having conversations with several farmers who talk in the hundreds of acres, if not thousands. There is an understanding of a better way of farming. One that is not damaging to the land they farm and can move them back to the heritage of UK farmers; that of custodians of the land. Generations of farmers created the patchwork of small farms that weaved a mosaic of hedges all across our countryside. They managed ponds, meadows and woodlands.
Nowadays, you are more likely to see a driver of massive tractors playing candy crush on his iPhone than being a custodian of wildlife. The cycle of chemical fertilisers and pesticides is not only killing the countryside but the innate beauty and romance of the farmer.
The vast desserts of mono-cropped fields is a far cry from the idyllic notion of the flat-capped, hill walking man with a scythe in his hand and sweat on his brow. The romance I have always felt for the land workers is one who earns his sleep each night. A life of beauty in surroundings that mean so much, as you were part of sculpting that beauty.
The life of a small market garden is perilous in other ways. The frustration of working a season at a time on land that you could be evicted from at any moment. The desire to plant deep roots and design a system of a thousand-years but in reality moving beds around every few months for a good yield.
The conversation is beginning to change as the customer-focus of the market gardener and the aim of many to live a land-based environmentally friendly existence is becoming more valuable to the traditional big farms. They know that they will need to transition away from the chemical-system of today and that land workers are getting older and fewer with each passing season.
This coming together of the big and small farmer is one that I think will offer beautiful outcomes over the next few years. The relationship between land, food and community is shifting. Its ownership and benefits will readjust. We have the ability to make a new food culture that will benefit all of us.
