A Very Small Farm: The new US Farm Census is out (see below.) Photo: USDA/flickr/CC
Farmers on Screen: Two new documentary-style films are out, one on farmers and another on food. "Farmland" portrays a handful of young farmers finding thir path in this uncertain business. By no means an exposé, it's essentially a love letter to those who work the land. (Disclosure: I grew up on an Oregon farm near here.) Star of this show is owner of "One Woman Farm," a hard-working Pennsylvania vegetable grower. She has amazing energy and drive.
Sugary Food on Screen: The other film, "Fed Up," is an exposé about the ills of processed foods laced with sugar. We know it's better to not eat sugar but for many people sugar is built in to the only foods they can afford. If only fruits and vegetables were as cheap as all those processed, packaged foods in the middle of the store. Mark Bittman of the New York Times (who appears in the film,) calls it an "Inconventient Truth" for food.
How Many Farms and Farmers?: The U.S. has trended for decades towards fewer farmers and larger farms, a trajectory almost as reliable as the sun rising in the east. What's happening now? The latest USDA Farm Census is out, a few topline numbers: Three quarters of farms produced three percent of harvests, while four percent of farms produced nearly two-thirds of harvests. Organic farms, despite their increase in number still produced less than one percent of harvests.
Data Drives Tractors: GPS has been on grain harvesters for years, but imagine buying a subscription that tells your GPS-guided tractor (driver not needed) where to drive, when to turn, how much and what type of fertilizer to apply, how many seeds to plant per acre, and even what varieties to sow. This future is closer than you might think, and some farmers are concerned about the privacy of their farm data in the hands of big firms. The radio program Here and Now at WBUR addresses this trend, and Dan Charles at NPR also looked at farmer privacy worries around data in detailed maps of farm fields.
Small Farm Success: A report in The Guardian describes a farmer in India who has quadrupled rice harvest by using a technique called "Intensification." It needs a lot of labor and precise timing of planting and fertilizer applications, but it does show yields can go up. We'll need more success like this to feed everyone as years pass. Rice scientists in China and the Phillippines who study such accompishments are not so impressed.
Where Farmland Comes From: But if we keep growing more crops for more people we'll likely need more land to do it, regardless of improved yield per acre. That's how we've historically increased harvest, by cutting and burning forests for farm fields. The trend continues, or maybe has never stopped, and a paper last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences uses current U.S. land use patterns to project into decades ahead what our landscapes will look like. This especially as population rises, cities expand and we convert more land to grow more food. Nature move over.
Talking Heads: On C-SPAN last week, I addressed the formidable challenges of feeding a growing world population. I was talking about a #futureoffood project we are doing at National Geographic.
