Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Kristof Says Farmers Have No Soul

August 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Food for the Soul
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
YAMHILL, Ore.

On a summer visit back to the farm here where I grew up, I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all.

More fundamentally, it has no soul.

The family farm traditionally was the most soulful place imaginable, and that was the case with our own farm on the edge of the Willamette Valley. I can’t say we were efficient: for a time we thought about calling ourselves “Wandering Livestock Ranch,” after our Angus cattle escaped in one direction and our Duroc hogs in another. Read More

Every Kristof article about agriculture and food production always starts off with him trying to establish some type of credibility because he grew up on a farm several decades ago. Kristof thinks all farms should look like the one he grew up on. He doesn’t think anything else other than what he knows is a “real family farm”. Now he has gone a step further in trying to insult many farmers and ranchers by claiming that they don’t have a soul. He doesn’t really explain at what point one loses their soul however. He talks to a friend that has a 225 cow dairy and apparently he is OK, but what about the guy down the road with 300 head or how about 700 head? At what point does Kristof think farmers and ranchers quit caring about what they do?

1 comment:

Dave Sjeklocha, DVM said...

Great points, Troy. I wonder why Kristof left the farm? Seems to me his soul should be in question for leaving the farm and then criticizing those who are working the farm.