bountiful is not universal

appreciation of the Eastern Shore

We drove to a family celebration in Philadelphia today, bisecting ‘the Peninsula’. Driving across the majestic Chesapeake Bay Bridge (I mused on the way home that I doubt 1 in 20 Marylanders know its formal title is the William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge), one returns to a portion of the country with a much older history than most people appreciate.

Maryland’s colonial history, woven together with the evils of slavery, reliance on addictive tobacco as the primary crop, and the tragedy of Europeans eradicating native populations from their historic lands, originated on the peninsula. St. Mary’s City was an original European settlement, the Choptank River banks hosted plantations, and many of our most basic national debates over religion, social class, enslavery, and politics occurred across these lands. While fiction, James Michener’s Chesapeake (New York: Dial Press Trade, 2014) gives flavour to the evolution of both the region’s human and physical experiences.

I enjoy driving along U.S. Route 301 because I respect the historic reminders and because the views offered such a different perspective on our nation from the one I see most days. Today was a partially sunny morning but the return was fully cloudy. Houses, built decades ago in most cases, dot the landscape to mark those remaining family farms proudly centered on their properties long providing produce to the urban areas which grew ever larger over the twentieth century.

The fields the route slices through were surprisingly rich, even the first week in January. The dark green in several spots contradicted the winter season but reminded me of the ability to grow food in this area. Other fields were fallow as their owners prepare them for planting ahead.

Most of the traditional family farms are now parter of bigger agriculture ventures, a phenomenon upsetting as a loss of the family enterprises and a lifestyle. Rising cost have certainly driven many families out of agriculture across the United States over hte past seventy-five years but that change also coincides with higher productivity from changes in ‘big ag’. Like everything else in this country, changes have consequences. More food is a benefit for all of us but more of it is ‘industrial’ production which lacks the human touch. There are more chemicals used but more production resutls. Does that matter? It depends who you ask. Each of us has our own assessment. Is it tragic that the family farms are disappearing? Yes but that leads to questions about whether the individual farmer can produce as efficiently as the corporate farms. Is cost the sole reason people left farming or is it more complicated than that?

Industrial chicken farms also occupy some of the former family farms of the Eastern Shore. These huge production areas meet an burgeoning demand for poulty here and abroad. One of the underappreciated aspects of the bilateral relationship with China is chicken exports which are so in demand in the People’s Republic. Fear of undersupply along with overall concerns about food security is one of the thousand things that Xi Jinping and the leadership worry about constantly. The traditional Chinese farming which the nation’s modernisation undercut over the past forty years, by siphoning off workers from rural areas to the big cities for factory jobs, made China more food insecure. Whatever one things about the United States, we generally never use the term food insecure to describe our condition.

China also has dramatic water woes, with far too little water in most places and way more than they need in the southeast during the monsoon season. The soil pollution resulting from chemical overexploitation is terrible. I wonder whether China’s regime will as completely replicate insecticide destruction Soviet desperation to increase cotton production wrought on production surrounding Central Asia’s Aral Sea. China’s regime, so fearful of somehow being in a position where Washington could cut off their access to food, worries about food on people’s tables today far more than they thinking ahead about the implications of some of their actions twenty years from now.

We in the United States have many policy differences on food, the business of agriculture, the environmental implications of many options but we need recall we actually have those arguments because we can. We make mistakes but we have multiple government agencies attempting to moderate activity to produce the best outcome. Our republic has always been built on compromise which is based on discussion. We are monitor insecticides more carefully today than half a century ago. Perfect? No but better than the overwhelming majority of the world because transparency and accountability still matter.

Driving along Route 301 reminded me of the bounty of all we do harvest annually. We have options to continue working this soil after centuries because of the ingenuity and drive that has characterised this area since the seventeeth century. That is not license to exploit the people, the land, or the animals still grown there but we underappreciate all the advantages we have in this country. Life on the DelMarva peninsula evolved to meet the challenges that emerged. Without recognising that actions create consequences, I suspect generations would have abandoned this area in moving to somewhere new.

What we cannot do is abandon that optimism characterising those who work so hard. I do not suggest we give anyone free reign to exploit nor to turn off innovation but I do hope we continue to consider all of the implications of the challenges and options facing us, on agriculture as much as anything else. It is vital.

For me, the reminder today of the resilience of this small portion of this vast country was a sign of hope. But, like so much, it is hope as long as we think through the implications of the variety of steps we take. We have always, regardless of what it sounds in any pique, tended towards balance and thought. FIN