Amber Waves of Grain

Americans have always romanticized the farmer. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example."*

Children are doused with farm stories. At one and two I sang "Old MacDonald" and "The Farmer in the Dale." As I grew older, my mother read me reams of picture books set on farms and, later, Charlotte's Web and Farmer Boy. When I was eight years old I declared that I would marry a farmer when I grew up.

I don't know how much other countries romanticize farming and farmers, but to me farming seems to fit the American ideal, as defined by Americans. We imagine the family farm, self-sustaining, self-made, the triumph of the individual. Of course, most farms in the United States today are factory farms.

And, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. Perhaps this is because I romanticize industry instead (I think my father's plant looks like fairy land; I took the heart the words of my engineering professor: "Industry is what allows you to be at a university instead of picking turnips.") There is nothing intrinsically more moral about an agricultural society, and nothing that makes a farmer more noble than a factory worker or manager or owner.

In fact, I think we need to de-emphasize agriculture by eliminating farm subsidies. This would be immensely more fair to farmers in other countries such as Mexico, whose goods can't compete against heavily subsidized United States crops.

In this case, at least, I disagree with Thomas Jefferson.