So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 12) Why forgiving farmers' student loans plants the future
Hello!
I won't lie: It's thrilling to see this over at The New York Observer. But you're getting the bonus pop culture links here, dear readers, because without you all, there would be no column at all. Thank you for subscribing!
And now, I want to revive something I used to do -- highlighting reader Twitter feeds because many of you are smart and funny, and why should we all suffer the cesspool side of Twitter when we can have a handpicked list of smart/funny/humane people on Twitter? If you want me to feature you, hit me up on Twitter.
*
The average age of the American farmer has crept up in the last 30 years, and both academia and the U.S. government wants to figure out how to reverse that trend. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Census of Agriculture, which is published every five years, the average farmer's aged up from 50 years to 58 years. Only 6% of U.S. farmers are younger than 35. The 2012 Census also showed a few other demographic developments -- the number of women who farm has dropped, while the number of minorities who began farming rose -- but the graying of the farmer is an issue that universities and policymakers in the United States are beginning to address.
Representative Joe Courtney (D-Connecticut) just introduced H.R. 1060, the Young Farmer Success Act, a bill that offers student loan forgiveness to farmers who commit to a decade in the occupation. The bill, a bipartisan effort co-sponsored by Rep. John Faso (R—New York) and Rep. Glenn Thompson (R—Pennsylvania), would require participating farmers to make income-adjusted student loan payments during the first decade they farmed. After that period, the balance on their student loans would be forgiven. Some states have already begun working on bills with similar policies: New York has a program to forgive student loans if after five years of farming, and lawmakers are looking at similar bills in Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and Montana.
But that's after farmers have already gone to college. Concurrent with the push to forgive loans for young farmers, a number of colleges have begun offering academic courses or majors aimed at farming and food systems, including: Stanford's FEED Collaborative, which focuses on sustainable agriculture; and North Carolina State's NC Choices, which also focuses on community-based food systems as well as sustainable agriculture. As Steve Holt reported in Civil Eats, colleges have seen overwhelming demand from students for courses on food policy and farming.
So what? Farmers don't make up a vast percentage of the U.S. population -- as of the 2012 Census of Agriculture, there were 3.2 million farmers, and as of July 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were 323 million Americans -- so farmers are basically one percent of the U.S. population. However, these are the people who grow 81% of the food U.S. residents eat. A national loan-forgiveness policy is a win-win for American farming families -- The kids can get an education (perhaps even one related to shifting farming practices) and still afford to come back and take over the family spread. It's also a win for American-grown food for Americans: an estimated 2/3 of farmland will pass out of the hands of the current crop of fiftysomething farmers in the next 25 years. Younger farmers willing to take on those tracts reduces the odds that the farms will go out of production, thus prompted a rise in food imports.
Who cares? Farming families, who may be wondering how they can afford to keep the business in the family. Ag policy wonks are also looking at these measures as a way of attracting and maintaining a workforce that has the education and training to guide U.S. agriculture into the next phase of crop production. As climate patterns continue to change, both historical farming practices (what crops to grow in what regions) and historical commodities knowledge will be less useful than being able to figure out how to farm in the future. And finally, anyone who cleaves to the locavore lifestyle should be keenly interested in supporting academic programs and social policies that keep their nearby farms in continuous production from generation to generation.
*
Your pop culture recommendation of the day: It will surprise exactly nobody to learn I watch IFC, and one of my favorite series on there is the Bill Hader/FredArmisen parody, Documentary Now! Granted, this a very hyper-specific kind of parody -- you have to be a documentary-watching nerd to enjoy a lot of the jokes -- but when the jokes land, they land hard. Example A: Sandy Passage, a 20-minute parody of Grey Gardens that nails the weirdness of the original and then drives the story to a genuinely hysterical conclusion.
Example B: My favorite episode from season two, Parker Gail's Location Is Everything. It's a brilliant parody of Spalding Grey's Swimming to Cambodia, and what had me on the floor laughing helplessly was the addition of people who fact-checked Parker Gail's monologue, including his exasperated girlfriend Ramona.
I love it when an artist's partner/material shows up to offer their side of the story -- especially if they refuse to be complicit in whatever mythopoetic BS their artist partner is extruding. So I especially enjoyed reading "The Best Thing About This Book Is The Writer's Wife," in which Stephen Marche's new book, The Unmade Bed, is improved immeasurably with the addition of commentary by his wife, editor Sarah Fulford.
Autobiographies with commentary tracks by the people referenced! I approve of this genre. And I look forward to finding more of it.
*