Interviewer:Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries, as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become as corrupt as in Europe.” What is the connection between farming and preserving a virtuous society?
Mr. Hanson: That’s an old idea that farming serves two purposes. It’s not like agribusiness. It doesn’t just produce food, but it [also] produces citizens. The idea behind it goes back to Greece, if you read Xenophon’s “Oeconomicus” or Varro the Latin agronomist, the message that comes out of that is that farming requires your brain and your brawn. So you plan an orchard, but then you physically have to enact that, so if you’re a farmer who can only think, you’re not going to succeed in a pre-industrial society, but if you’re just a brute, you’ll make mistakes. So they felt that farming gave a person the perfect balance between the head and the body. And then it allows them to connect in a realistic fashion with nature. People in town … were either afraid of it or they romanticized it. But the farmer was a partner with nature. He knew that he had to kill bad bugs to produce wheat. But he also understood there were good bugs that ate the bad bugs. So he tried to find a balance.
In classical agronomy, the idea was that that process created a different type of citizen. In other modalities, people either didn’t own the land that they worked, or they were indentured—in other words, they had small plots, but they didn’t have a title to it. So if you give a man a title, and they own it, they improve it, and you have inheritance laws that allow them to pass it on, then you create an involved citizen.
I think there’s alot of truth to that. Too bad big agribusiness has taken over so many family farms, just as big corporations have taken over so many small businesses, and centralized Big government has taken over so much of our “self-governance”.
I will add this; I have never met a good farmer, who was not a smart person, and not just smart, but one who thought about a number of topics, such as, politics, foreign affairs, economics, climate and theology/philosophy. Most good farmers are also mechanics, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, have a good head for math, are good at long-term planning, and they meditate and ruminate while in the field or at work on the farm.
When working together, they often solve all of the world’s problems.
Not to say that they cannot also be stubborn and mean SOBs, but they aren’t dumb clod-hoppers.
I wish for everyone to have a little bit of dirt to plant, so as to enjoy the hope that comes from things growing in the Spring.
We were stringing the hop-yard last Sunday with our son, and it was a day when March was treating us to a day like a lamb. I shouted up to my son, who was in the loader I was driving, “It is a day that gives you hope.” He looked at me with a smile and a two thumbs up sign. All the grands ran by with the pups after that, heading to the pond to let them swim…and quick behind them came their moms running to keep up after waving to us three at the hop-stringing. Later we planted peas and kale in the tilled garden by the strawberries. Altogether a day brimming over with hope. And I wished that wish right then for all of you here.
We are very lucky to live together on the farm…and we each know it.
