"It is not, it is not," saith the buyer, but then in his heart he laughs. Proverbs 20:14
One of the paradigms of American farming is that the farmer has always been grossly underpaid. The people who buy the foods produced do so on a wholesale basis. They contrive artificial ways to penalize farmers for not producing the crops or animals wanted in the ways that are most profitable to the wholesalers. The end-consumers are rarely considered in the process.
Many people do not know that in the average box of cereal it cost more to make the package than the farmers gets paid for the grain.
They resent it. But until recently, there was little they could do. And they get little sympathy from the shoppers who try to stretch their grocery budgets to feed an entire family because those shoppers have born the burden of paying for the packaging, marketing and consumer research.
Present day reality is that once we transitioned from being an agrarian society to an industrial one, the food the farmers sent us was taken for granted.
All of that is changing because the soaring medical bills most families encounter are proof enough that our food is not doing for us what it is supposed to. Many are turning to local farmers to try to re-capture the health that was common two generations ago.
They do it through CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) that contract to provide fresh produce with pesticides or herbicides. For a good example, see the CSA in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Roll Tide!)
They participate in "Cow Share" programs that facilitate the ownership of individual cows, thus making the unprocessed milk available to the owner.
For details and scientific research see our friends at Eat Wild.Com.
