Brad Masi of the New Agrarian Center has posted a great set of videos, the NE Ohio Food Congress Interactive Film Portal, which capture comments, thoughts and ideas of those attending the NE Ohio Food Congress last November.  In a comment on one of the videos, "gorn" raised the question of farm labor and whether there was enough available labor at low enough cost for producers in local food systems to compete with the global system.  It's a good question that we've heard before and deserving of some additional discussion, which I'll post here as well as at the Interactive Film Portal. 

Is farming just too much work?

Labor clearly is a concern for farms, particularly those adopting a more labor-intensive production and marketing style.  Farming oriented to direct sales of foodstuffs, rather than commodity production, does tend to require more labor and less mechanization, at least less of the big equipment that results in the eye popping production capability of energy and input intensive large-scale farming systems.  Regardless of the scale, there’s a lot of farm work that is difficult to mechanize, like harvesting certain fruits and vegetables, processing meats, etc.  But concerns about how we can find the people power in Ohio to accomplish more localized food systems with more producers, more labor, and more direct sales ring hollow for at least 3 reasons.

First, Ohio currently has some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.  Do we really need to worry about having too much work?  A school district near Canton recently had nearly 700 applications for a single janitorial position.  Sure farming is hard work, but has its satisfactions too; hard work in the fresh air producing fresh food may not be so bad.

Second, there’s a scale issue that needs to be considered.  The work that usually gets singled out is the work that low-paid migrant laborers do, work that US citizens don’t want.  It’s brutal indeed.  I’ve seen crews on their knees for a week straight cutting and bundling the same vegetable with a big sharp knife.  You’ve probably read about how difficult it is to work for a big poultry processor.   But it’s precisely because of the large scale that the hand labor is so repetitive and conditions so tough.  We’re talking about tens or hundreds of acres of the same crop.  Smaller and diversified operations with a tenth of an acre of this and a quarter acre of that require less of the same repetitive job, and more different tasks of each employee.  Sure it’s still hard work, but a whole different ergonomic story.  With more of the food dollar passing from the consumer to the producer, and less going to all the processing and advertising and other stuff in between, the pay scales just might improve too.  And as noted in the previous comment, farming doesn’t have to be every farmer’s career or sole source of income.  It has always been a desirable part-time job for a lot of people.

Finally, we’re talking about a perfect opportunity for innovation.  John Deere is a partner on our work with growing local food systems and economies because their innovative engineers see many possibilities for producing new and different kinds of equipment that leave the human in the equation but remove the mechanical stress and strain that makes the work so hard on the body.  Just because we’re shifting production scales back from a few huge to many smaller farms doesn’t mean we ignore every advance in engineering and technology that has accumulated since before farming became so mechanized.

So if you’re worried about where we’re going to find people to do the work, I’d encourage you to think more deeply about what the work is and can be and what the new opportunities are in re-integrating food and farming into the lives of more people and communities.