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Column: Farming best practices are all about perception

Farming is like parenting; there’s no instruction manual, it requires a lot of trial and error.
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Farming is like parenting; there’s no instruction manual, it requires a lot of trial and error, and it seems as though everyone has an opinion about how it should be done.

Now, I’m not a parent, but as far as I can tell, the moment someone brings a child into the world the floodgates of opinions open and everyone is going to tell you what you’re doing wrong. I guess it can be chalked up to human nature; we think we’ve got it all figured out. And farming is no different. Just as a mother who gives her child a chocolate bar will be judged for poisoning them, and another mother who doesn’t allow her children to have a chocolate bar will be judged for not letting her kids be kids, farmers will be judged regardless of the decisions they make.

There are an endless number of ways to run a farm or ranch, and just as every child in the world requires different methods of parenting, every farm requires different methods of operating. Variables such as location, type of agriculture business, and even the personality of the farmer will determine what processes will be used for a particular farm.

Social concerns also play a large role in influencing the way a farm is run, such as sustainability, food cost, health, and environmental impact. To properly address each concern it requires a different method of operation, though, each farmer will have their own opinions about how those methods should be executed, and what methods are the most effective.

When it comes to parental judgment it usually comes from two types of people: Those who are not parents that believe they could do it better, and those who are parents that believe their method of parenting is the only way to parent. However, in each case, neither the non-parent or the ‘other’ parent has experience with any one parent’s unique individual experience.

And yes, you guessed it, farming is just the same.

In agriculture, we receive judgment from two types of people: Those who are not farmers that believe they could do it better, and those who are farmers that believe their method of farming is the only way to farm. In such a connected and diverse world we require significant diversity when it comes to the way we produce food.

The social concerns I previously mentioned including food costs and sustainability necessitate a much different method of farming than the concern for ‘health’ food does (I use the term “health” loosely since there is no scientific proof to say that one process of growing food is healthier than another).

It is estimated that in just over twenty-five years our world population will grow to nine billion. We will have to increase the food produced on our planet by sixty percent to feed the projected growth of two billion people by the year 2050.

In a world with an ever-growing population, many farmers are concerned with producing sufficient amounts of food for as little cost as possible to sustain worldwide nutrition. Not to mention with a growing population comes less farmable land, that will, in turn, require more food to be produced on less land than we currently farm. And while these concerns are the driving force behind some farmers methods of agriculture, others are concerned with filling a popular niche to grow food the way our ancestors did.

Though both processes fill considerably different needs, neither is the right or wrong way to farm. Just as in parenting, and nearly every other aspect of life, our world is full of various ideologies. I firmly believe it is the right of every farmer to have the freedom to choose what agricultural process best suits their ideals without prosecution from government, society, and especially, their fellow farmers.