FARM PRODUCTION CHANGES

Last week I spent two days in Kenosha, Wisconsin doing farm seminars.  I had a couple of different hosts for this event, and as part of one day's session the University of Wisconsin Extension Service offered a fascinating handout.

                  Those of us in the clean and local food movement sometimes feel like we're talking to an empty space.  Our short memories don't allow us to see what things were like before Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma entered the picture.

                  In 2000, Wisconsin had 20,000 dairies.  In 2025, it had 5,000.  Contemplate that for a moment.  Thousands and thousands of 30-40 cow dairies sustained families for generations and suddenly, within 25 years, it completely collapsed.  The number of cows is still the same; dairy farms have gotten bigger.  Everywhere I drove over the two days I saw abandoned dairy farms, with an overgrown silo and collapsing barn.

                  Six counties (Racine, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Walworth, Waukesha and Jefferson) produced nearly 6 million pounds of butter in 1885.  In 1905, these same counties produced nearly 17 million pounds of butter.  Four of the counties didn't even make cheese until 1905.  During that time, farms didn't get bigger.  This represents an increase in farms and farmers. 

                  In 1920, Kenosha County had 1,400 farms; today, it's 400.  In 1920 it had 200,000 acres in farms and today only 100,000 acres.  Meanwhile, average farm size since 1920 has increased from about 110 acres to nearly 200 acres.  Where did all that land go?  Residential, parks, commercial development.

                  One of the most interesting charts was a breakdown of vegetable production.  In 1920, the county had nearly 6,000 acres in cabbage, onions, potatoes, and sugar beets.  Today, the only vegetables registering are pumpkins, and that's on about 200 acres.  These are primarily agritourism pumpkin patches.

                  When you look at all these charts as a composite, what they show is a dramatic decline in a locality feeding itself and a catastrophic decrease in farms and farmers with a parallel increase in non-farmland conversion.  This basic pattern is consistent across the U.S.

                  Realize that in 1950 Ed Faulkner wrote Plowman's Folly and sold half a million copies in six months.  Can you imagine any farm book today selling that many that fast?  A book on plowing and soil care?  Are you kidding?  What a different world that was.

                  Without going into all the geo-political and social elements of this change, just think about what a different landscape greeted the average person in that day.  It was a mosaic of diversified products, small farms, and highly integrated local markets.  It was such a different world that today we can hardly conceive of the food/farm vibe at that time.

                  Compared to today, was that a better food/farm context or worse?