Setting Up the Shot

It is estimated that 2.5% of those involved in the labor force today are farmers.  150 years ago it was over half.  100 years ago it was 1/3.  50 years ago it was just under 1/10.

As one of those farmers, I don’t have any particularly feelings one way or another about the trend.  It is a subsequent trend, riding the coattails of this one, that concerns me.  Most people don’t know a farmer.

There’s no longer a connection with the family’s farm couple over the holidays.  Kids no longer venture to the farm for the summer.  Unless random chance places you beside one on an airplane, you can go your entire life and never once have a meaningful conversation with the people involved in producing your food.

There is a gap, then, a meaningful one, existing in between the farmer and the consumer.  While local farmer markets can put you in touch with those that raise the tomatoes you buy there, I’m a little uncertain the role that truly plays in bridging this gap.  It certainly provides an emotional connection to those raising the produce, but I wouldn’t know enough to comment on the connection it provides to everyone else in our varied agricultural community.

The Backdrop

Yesterday, just before 6 in the morning, I began working with a film crew hired by the Iowa Beef Industry Council that was to document the day in a life of three families involved in raising cattle from across the state.  We wrapped things up just before 8 last night.  We spent 14 hours for a few minutes of video, a chance to tell a little of the story of the 20,000 Iowa farms with beef cows, and to partly bridge the gap I wrote about above.

There will never be a postcard made of our family farmstead.  No equipment manufacturer is in danger of shooting a commercial here.  It’s simply a farm.  I have no idea what the view was like on the other end of the camera, but it didn’t bother me any.  Like everyone else which makes up these farms, we’re simply human.

Hopefully, it will show one of those human faces.  Hopefully it will remind someone that agriculture today is not some cold, mechanical thing producing the food you purchase at the grocery store.  Hopefully in the unknown someone somewhere finds the familiar.  Hopefully someday you get that airplane seat by a farmer.

The crew had no airplane ticket.  They had Dad, though, and maybe that’s close enough.