But around the world, I am not alone: The United Nations estimates
that more than two billion people are farmers, most of them small farmers; that’s about one in three people on the planet.
An English Sheep Farmer’s View of Rural America -
By JAMES REBANKSMARCH 1, 2017
MATTERDALE, England — I am a traditional small farmer in the North of England.
But for my entire life, my own country has apathetically accepted an American model of farming and food retailing, mostly through a belief
that it was the way of progress and the natural course of economic development.
Significant areas of rural America are broken, in terminal economic decline, as food production
heads off to someplace else where it can be done supposedly more efficiently.
I have come home convinced that it is time to think carefully, both within America
and without, about food and farming and what kind of systems we want.
James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) is the author of the memoir “The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches From an Ancient Landscape.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 2, 2017, in The International New York Times.
With the presidential campaign over and a president in the White House whom rural Kentuckians
helped elect, the new political establishment might want to think about this carefully.
