David Link

President Eisenhower and Mamie at her parents house • Denver, CO • 1953!

In 1935, at its peak, two years after farmer Ed Carlson’s fateful trip with a dead cow, moldy sweet clover and a bucket of blood that wound not coagulate, a symbol of a breaking Ag system, from St. Croix County, WI, near Minneapolis and the banks of the Mississippi River, to Madison, WI looking for the state vet. Then, the U.S. had 6.8 million farms and a population of 127 million.

Currently, the U.S. has approximately 1.9 million farms and a population of 333 million.

This change results from a decades-long trend of consolidating American farmland into fewer and larger operations—a trend mirrored throughout the food system, from seed and fertilizer suppliers to slaughterhouses and CPG companies.

Agricultural production in the U.S. now focuses on fewer crops. In the case of corn, our most widely grown crop, nearly half the harvest goes to non-food products.

This is a significant reason why the U.S. has become a net importer of food in three of the last five years.

Another consequence of the move toward large monolithic farm conglomerates is the decline of meaningful innovation.

Farm conglomerates tend to move slowly, follow norms established by the industrial farming and food system they serve, and are disincentivized to think outside the box of the chemical agriculture paradigm.

Following this trend, our food system will only become more fragile and susceptible to shocks, whether due to unpredictable weather, supply chain disruptions, or geopolitical events.

Diversifying our farmland and organizing crop production around bioregions rather than corporatism are necessary to avoid further collapse of our food system and to maintain the health of farmland and people.
From Sam Knowlton, SoilSymbiotics

Full moon setting over Arapahoe Community College 🌕

https://youtu.be/g5IUqUA6UF4?si=ejND16I_7BsYQI1n

DuPont cellophane commercial (DuPont Cavalcade of America) Spokesman, Bill Hamilton discusses cellophane and how DuPont research created a moisture proof version which created new products and uses. Over time, new ma...