I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Perhaps I should keep my gloom to myself. But I am entering the acceptance stage of grief — and so I would like to offer the following thoughts.
When I was growing up, I was indoctrinated with the idea that I could “be” anything I wanted to be. So much to my father’s distress, I decided to be a farmer. I have found farming to be challenging, exhausting, but very gratifying. For almost 30 years, I’ve made a living in farming, albeit a very modest living. I have worked on many farms, in many states, and grown many crops. I’m used to looking over the time horizon, for weather, crop planning, business planning, regulatory changes.
For the past 20 years or so, the decline of farming in western Massachusetts had seemed to stabilize. There was an influx of new growing practices, new marketing ideas — the local food movement — and “first generation” farmers who joined a core group of umpteenth-generation farmers. Although suburban-style development chipped away at farmland, the State’s APR (Agriculture Protection Restriction) program secured some of the better ground. Gone were the fields of tobacco, asparagus, and cucumbers, but vast fields of potatoes, and a patchwork of vegetables and specialty crops, remained.
But countervailing trends were there to be seen. The old farmers just kept getting older, and the younger farmers kept leaving for better pay and more security. The cost of land kept going up. Input prices went up and up. Climate disasters took more of a toll. Government funding dried up. Migrant farmworkers were vilified. Now any farmer gathering starts with the sad news of someone’s passing away. And the Gazette runs more and more stories about solar development of farmland.
The solar rents will be at least twice as high, over a 20-year period, as the payment from the State’s APR program. The farmers understand that the thousands of steel posts supporting the “dual use” solar panels will make normal machine operation virtually impossible, but the average non-farmer will believe that there is some equivalence between a flock of sheep under solar and the previous cornfield. What we all should recognize is that solar panels in no way improve the viability of the farmland. The counter argument is that the farm business will receive offsetting income, and the climate crisis will be somewhat mitigated.
One certainty is that there will be fewer farmers, and less production of crops. But this outcome may have been inevitable given the economics of farming.
I would like to finish by saying I mourn what we are losing, having experienced all the joys and traumas of farming. There will still be a few farmers in our region, myself included, God willing. Most will have second or third jobs, and work harder than ever to maintain our fading heritage.
So, appreciate any farmer you may meet — slap them (gently!) on the back! And buy local!
Fred Beddall lives in Holyoke.