The truth is that when this nation chose to eliminate four million farmers (with their families, hired help, buildings, and boundaries) on the advice of the colleges of agriculture, the agricultural bureaucracy, and the agribusiness corporations, it committed a sort of cultural genocide.
Ugh I’ve posted a decent amount about this. Farmers are not people to blindly idealize. They can be good people that try to do the right thing. They pay their workers fairly, use minimal pesticides and herbicides, try to rebuild the topsoil, shit like that. I specifically worked for people like that because its important to my emotional wellbeing to know we’re trying to live with nature and not conquer and destroy it. But a shit ton of them basically fuck the earth to death at their feet until its barren and sell off when it goes fallow and wonder why all their kids don’t want to do the same. Sorry hoss, they won’t get the yields cuz you turned what was fertile ground into dust by overfarming. And a shit ton of them are reactionary fucksticks who whine endlessly about taxes. And don’t get me started on those “all hat no cattle” suburban dudes who get a truck so they can haul god knows what.