Why Are So Many People Anti-Farming?
As a farmer, I have noticed that there seems to be a growing disconnect between people and where their food comes from. In the past, many people would have had relatives working in the countryside, giving them a direct link to their food source. However, this connection has dwindled with the passing of time, and we are now seeing a generation of people who have little or no understanding of where their food comes from.
One of the main reasons for this is the pace of modern life. People are so rushed that they no longer value mealtimes as they once did. Eating has become something to do quickly in between other activities rather than a time to sit down and enjoy a meal. This means that many people do not take the time to consider where their food has come from.
Furthermore, surprisingly many people had grandparents who worked on the land. Give it another generation, and there will hardly be any left. To someone living on a housing estate in London, farmers are a world away. People can't know what they don't know, and media coverage isn't always balanced. Food is now a weapon to be used by influential people with vested interests, and regular people don't know any different.
Another issue is how people are being divided into "them and us" over everything. This polarization is not good, and it also applies to people in farming. There is a binary approach to all opinions, regen or not regen, conservation or not, etc. This is not helpful, and it only serves to divide people further.
It's not so much "anti-farming" as "anti-everything." Some people are just critical about specific farming techniques, which is fine. However, most people don't fully grasp what we do, and I often find myself explaining fairly basic concepts like rotation to intelligent people.
We need to back the farmers. Public perception is often skewed by a few bad eggs on social media and traditional media. It's important to remember that being anti the industrialisation of farming does not make someone anti-farming. Similarly, being anti-pesticides and habitat destruction does not make someone anti-farming. Yearning for nature recovery does not make someone anti-farming either.
Most people are so detached from rural ways that they are almost brainwashed into an urban existence, with zero concepts of where their forefathers came from. If it doesn't have streetlights or a connection to the digital world, it's a place to be in fear of. However, what on earth is "anti-farming"? Everybody eats. It's just a few noisy twirps. Today's worries are fed to us and exacerbated via social media. Bad news sells, and algorithms feed into a shit pit of nonsense.
The public generally isn't anti-farming. It's a few with loud hailers who do not represent society well and have a noisy bunch of followers. The elite wants the land for themselves and manipulate mainstream propaganda into convincing people that daftness like "rewilding" helps the planet. Damaging industrial agriculture should be taken over by family farms, supported by society to produce healthy food from outdoors.
Farming is essential to our way of life, and farmers must be supported. People need to reconnect with where their food comes from and understand the work that goes into producing it. We should encourage family farms to thrive and produce healthy food rather than industrial agriculture damaging our planet.