Stone, James: Paglia

Agriculture: A Few Feeding Many

A seed is planted. After many rains, a sprout shoots up from the earth. And after many more days, a huge tree stands rooted where once that tiny seed was planted. A farmer plants a great many seeds, and from the care given to that seed food is grown that helps to feed us all. And yet, without a working and scientific knowledge of how and why that seed works, the modern day farmer would never have come this far.

Camille Paglia said, “Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity.” That quote immediately got me thinking about farmers. Farmers work hard so that we don’t have to. They supply food, not only for the world, but for themselves as well. However, the number of farmers and farms are slowly diminishing in the United States. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, there were only 2,200 farms still active in the United States in the year 2008, and that number had decreased significantly in the past several years.

The education and further education of farmers is needed to keep them up to date with all the current technology used to increase yields and profit from food. Without constant learning and application of the new skills, the farmer will become obsolete very quickly. The way that farmers operate today is very different than the way that farmers operated thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. 

Paglia also stated that, “Vanishing of jobs will plague the rest of this decade and more.” While this problem is serious and true, that will never be a problem with farmers. They will always be needed to provide food for the world. The only issue that could cause problems for the modern day farmer is that there is no financial security in farming anymore. That is why the number of farms and farmers are decreasing throughout America. 

As I stated above, farmers are have a constant need to continue their education. That helps them to develop better methods of production and inspire new ideas. If farmers could develop faster methods of growing grain, then they could increase production and profit for their farms. In order for a farmer to discover this, however, they would need to have a working knowledge of grain growth, genetics, and chemistry. These fields are constantly changing and evolving, and therefore require extensive refreshment and additional learning.

All in all, I believe that Camille Paglia shares a misconception with most people in the world. She doesn’t understand that farmers, and agriculturalists alike, are constantly adapting to new methods of farming and science to help keep up with the ever growing human population while fighting against bacterial and viral assaults from nature. She says that college doesn’t prepare its students for the real world. But in all reality, what could get more real than feeding billions of people?