“You have small farmers who somehow get into this illusion that, individually, they are somebody in the larger system, but they’re making a mistake… Individually, we’re not viable. We can be critical to the future of agriculture in the world, but only if we organize into large-scale systems of small farms.”
So says Reginald Haslett-Marroquin, a trained agronomist who emigrated from Guatemala when he was 25. He and Amy Haslett-Marroquin now run a chicken farm in a regional network with seven other farmers in Minnesota. He’s quoted in FERN’s last story of the year, “The collective future of American agriculture,” by Dean Kuipers, co-produced with The Nation.
The story was timely, given the growing movement to create alternatives to – or legally fight – concentration in the ag industry. This has long been a thematic focus at FERN, and we enjoy highlighting those trying to shift the ag paradigm in positive ways.
But that work can also be problematic, as Leanna First-Arai found when she visited the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to see how energy companies are pushing biogas — producing methane gas from animal waste — as a climate solution. She found neighbors sickened by the noxious emissions from large-scale chicken operations and talked with critics who worry that the plant, which theoretically can offset greenhouse gas emissions, will support a production system that generates waste and pollution along with billions of pounds of chicken meat. This story is the latest in our deep dives into climate change and agriculture, a series which has taken us from Alaska’s Bristol Bay to Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
We gather stories like these in an annual magazine-style print collection, The Dirt: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Food and Agriculture. Beautifully designed and with stunning photography, you can get the 2021 edition now for a monthly donation of at least $5, or for a one-time gift of $50. Please support us as we try to raise $40,000 between now and December 31 so we can continue our work ahead.
Wishing you the best for the holidays. Be safe out there with your friends and family.