I am a new subscriber and grateful reader through a mutual friend, the Friesens! This essay would make a great conversation with the vision of Pope Leo XIII in §47 of Rerum Novarum, where he writes about private ownership of land, since the very soil provides our means of living. Besides a more equitable land division and more sovereignty belonging to man in his work, he writes about the great enjoyment and incentive of "work[ing] on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self evident." The Wendell Berry claim makes a lot of sense. When we will take part in all the making of our sustinence, we will see quickly what care is required, and will not as easily waste the fruits of such labor, or violate the dignity of people and things. I hope to contribute to this more just system one step at time with our family farm and the development of a public "Borgo" or land-devoted monastery in our diocese/corner of the planet. Thank you for your inspiring reflections and your work.
welcome to my Substack, Monet, and what a wonderful note to receive! Thank you so much. Where is your family farm? I wonder if you have looked at Elinor Ostrom's work on common land use? In one of her books she talks about a parish in Spain where the church helps adjudicate common land law distribution--holdover from the medieval period, but one that she thinks has interesting potential for the 21st cent.
That sounds really cool! Thank you for the recommendation; I will look for a copy of Ostrom's Governing the Commons, if that's the one, and I saw some interesting journal articles she published. Our farm is a little 13-acre property in Kernersville, NC, with a couple donkeys, small herd of Romney sheep, chickens, turkeys, and some dwarf goats! Just the other day, someone mentioned to me a program begun by their friend, Growing High Point, where they are converting vacant lots into vegetable gardens and greenhouses for disadvantaged neighborhoods. A layman, Molly Burhans, recently brought her GIS tool to the Vatican after collating a lot of paper archives and digital maps to show all land holdings of the Catholic Church and the opportunity to maintain or convert them into "GoodLands." Very many opportunities. I wonder how swiftly and in what ways He might "renew the face of the earth" through us! Hope to visit Blacknoll or the Bell farm sometime, all the best--
Brilliant essay. These thoughts on migrant labour are profound and very helpful. I hadn't thought about the fact that all the interesting/humane parts of farm work are inaccessible to the migrant worker and that he or she is pretty much relegated to the status of a sentient tool.
I wonder how the farmhand (and even seasonal labourer) of, say, the British 1940s had it different to the modern day migrant labourer? In a sense, their jobs were similar but perhaps there were differing degrees of autonomy, a closeness to the farmer in the 1940s situation, and more varying avenues for skill and intellectual stimulus with the farmhands. How much of this is predicated on the relationship of the farmer to his farmhands I do not know (probably as well the size of the farms also plays a part in the difference).
I think you're right to ask that question, Hadden. The reliance on mechanization and digital technology has increased apace, such that most farmers in the West rarely get their hands dirty in the soil anymore. Part of this has to do with farm size. In the US, average farm size continues to rise steadily as more and more farmland gets bought up from small farming families. The US average right now is 465 acres per farm, up 20 acres from the previous year. A hundred years ago, that number was 180 acres per farm, give or take. (And all this is happening while we're losing massive swathes of farm and range land; since our last census, for instance, we lost 20 million acres of farmland--roughly the size of the state of Maine.) All this to say: when farms aren't human sized, farmers must rely on industrial-scale tools owned by large multi-national corporations. With larger farms and larger tools, we lose practical skills and wisdom. One small example: there's been a massive pushback by farmers against John Deere, which now has all these fancy computers in their tractors. Well, when a farmer buys a new tractor, JD retains ownership of the software inside the tractor. If a new tractor needs fixing, the farmer couldn't fix it without tampering with the private property of John Deere. It pissed off quite a few farmers. You can find lots of YouTube videos by farmers about how to hack into these software systems (mercifully, my tractor is from the 1980's, so not so complicated.)
Hey folks: just a quick note to say that I provided a link to the GoFundMe page that Juan Jose Ceballos's set up. You can also access it here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/bring-juan-jose-home-funeral-fund
Brilliant and timely! Thank you.
I am a new subscriber and grateful reader through a mutual friend, the Friesens! This essay would make a great conversation with the vision of Pope Leo XIII in §47 of Rerum Novarum, where he writes about private ownership of land, since the very soil provides our means of living. Besides a more equitable land division and more sovereignty belonging to man in his work, he writes about the great enjoyment and incentive of "work[ing] on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self evident." The Wendell Berry claim makes a lot of sense. When we will take part in all the making of our sustinence, we will see quickly what care is required, and will not as easily waste the fruits of such labor, or violate the dignity of people and things. I hope to contribute to this more just system one step at time with our family farm and the development of a public "Borgo" or land-devoted monastery in our diocese/corner of the planet. Thank you for your inspiring reflections and your work.
welcome to my Substack, Monet, and what a wonderful note to receive! Thank you so much. Where is your family farm? I wonder if you have looked at Elinor Ostrom's work on common land use? In one of her books she talks about a parish in Spain where the church helps adjudicate common land law distribution--holdover from the medieval period, but one that she thinks has interesting potential for the 21st cent.
That sounds really cool! Thank you for the recommendation; I will look for a copy of Ostrom's Governing the Commons, if that's the one, and I saw some interesting journal articles she published. Our farm is a little 13-acre property in Kernersville, NC, with a couple donkeys, small herd of Romney sheep, chickens, turkeys, and some dwarf goats! Just the other day, someone mentioned to me a program begun by their friend, Growing High Point, where they are converting vacant lots into vegetable gardens and greenhouses for disadvantaged neighborhoods. A layman, Molly Burhans, recently brought her GIS tool to the Vatican after collating a lot of paper archives and digital maps to show all land holdings of the Catholic Church and the opportunity to maintain or convert them into "GoodLands." Very many opportunities. I wonder how swiftly and in what ways He might "renew the face of the earth" through us! Hope to visit Blacknoll or the Bell farm sometime, all the best--
Brilliant essay. These thoughts on migrant labour are profound and very helpful. I hadn't thought about the fact that all the interesting/humane parts of farm work are inaccessible to the migrant worker and that he or she is pretty much relegated to the status of a sentient tool.
I wonder how the farmhand (and even seasonal labourer) of, say, the British 1940s had it different to the modern day migrant labourer? In a sense, their jobs were similar but perhaps there were differing degrees of autonomy, a closeness to the farmer in the 1940s situation, and more varying avenues for skill and intellectual stimulus with the farmhands. How much of this is predicated on the relationship of the farmer to his farmhands I do not know (probably as well the size of the farms also plays a part in the difference).
I think you're right to ask that question, Hadden. The reliance on mechanization and digital technology has increased apace, such that most farmers in the West rarely get their hands dirty in the soil anymore. Part of this has to do with farm size. In the US, average farm size continues to rise steadily as more and more farmland gets bought up from small farming families. The US average right now is 465 acres per farm, up 20 acres from the previous year. A hundred years ago, that number was 180 acres per farm, give or take. (And all this is happening while we're losing massive swathes of farm and range land; since our last census, for instance, we lost 20 million acres of farmland--roughly the size of the state of Maine.) All this to say: when farms aren't human sized, farmers must rely on industrial-scale tools owned by large multi-national corporations. With larger farms and larger tools, we lose practical skills and wisdom. One small example: there's been a massive pushback by farmers against John Deere, which now has all these fancy computers in their tractors. Well, when a farmer buys a new tractor, JD retains ownership of the software inside the tractor. If a new tractor needs fixing, the farmer couldn't fix it without tampering with the private property of John Deere. It pissed off quite a few farmers. You can find lots of YouTube videos by farmers about how to hack into these software systems (mercifully, my tractor is from the 1980's, so not so complicated.)