In the months leading up to the start of farm school, I was eager to talk about farming. I can compare my feelings of anticipation then to exactly how I felt before I left for AmeriCorps and even how I felt before I left for bootcamp. The simplest way to describe it is as an overwhelming excitement filled with ignorance. It was a feeling of being excited about this thing I had committed to, and the desire to speak with authority about it.
That excitement can lead to some dumb statements that I really look back on and shake my head about. Before leaving for NCCC, I had told people that we would all be smoke jumpers of some sort because I had heard that there were forest fire fighting teams included in the program. Before boot camp, I had told people we would all be the ones jumping out of helicopters because that is really all I had ever seen of the Coast Guard. And before farm school, I had begun to participate in arguments about tilling because I thought we’d all be learning to be no-till organic farmers.
Today, I know a little more about farming, but really what I know is that I have a lot more to learn. I have also learned that there is a ton of farming information on the internet that is contentious. Sensationalized information is really the name of the game these days. Everything presented on social media, with regard to farming, comes across as dire and absolute.
The “Till vs No Till” argument is one that seems to be a common source of content for social media and it is often framed as an us-vs-them-for-the-future-of-humanity type debate. The picture with this post is really representative of this argument with the appearance of the roller crimper and the subsoiler implements; the former being a representative of no-till and the latter being a deep till implement.
What I have learned so far is that there are many factors that go in to a farmer’s decision to till or not. There’s a ton of factors that go into ever aspect of farming. And every farmer has to make choices based on their equipment, their crops, and their abilities. I think the reality is that all farmers are doing their best with what they have to work with. Arguing for arguing’s sake is good for tech companies feeding off our on-platform-time, but it does not actually benefit the agricultural world. Wagging fingers and saying with absoluteness that things should be done one way everywhere does not benefit farming.
Farming seems to be about constantly adapting. Growing plants and animals on any scale is a challenge full of some variables that can be controlled and a lot of variables that can not be. There are best practices for particular situations like pest pressure and weed pressure, but nothing works every time. That’s the whole deal of it. Farmers figure out ways to make things work. They go from putting seeds in the ground to delivering harvests to customers, and everything in between. There’s a thousand ways it can all be done, but a farmer has to make the choices.
So I remind myself, It is not the critic that counts; it is the one in the arena who dares greatly.
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