Shabby Chic Boho Nowadays, we’re accustomed to having the collective knowledge of the world at our fingertips. A quick Google search or YouTube video is often all we need to stumble through any task. All the technology in the world, however, is no match for the collective knowledge passed down from one generation to the next. If children are equipped with the skills of the previous generation as they grow up, they will learn them with a degree of detail and nuance that no textbook, video, or internet search engine can replicate.
We see examples of this in every facet of civilization, and it is particularly important in the agricultural sector. Generational farms, which are passed down through families for decades or even centuries, have a number of advantages over their corporate competitors. In the following article, we’ll examine why teaching kids about the family farm is so valuable, not only for the children themselves, but for the communities they grow up in.
They Will Learn to Appreciate Where Food Comes From
Take a look at any meal on your table and think about where everything came from. A simple sandwich might have meat from one farm and tomatoes from another. Still another farm provided the lettuce, and another grew the grain that was made into the bread. Do you like olive oil? Avocados? Cheese? Each comes from still another farm, somewhere in the world.
People who have grown up on and around farms have a special understanding of where their food comes from and all the dozens of hardworking people needed to provide it. This fosters a unique appreciation in the next generation for what it takes to feed both an individual and the entire world.
Living Near Your Food Source Encourages Environmental Stewardship
There is a major connection between food and the environment: Farms depend greatly on local resources, including a clean source of water and the presence of pollinator insects and other local wildlife. For any farm to succeed and thrive, it must draw on these resources, and it will, in turn, impact the surrounding environment. Major benefits can be reaped if farms and the communities they serve work to utilize their resources responsibly and minimize the pesticides and other pollutants that end up in nature.
When the people who inhabit these communities have grown up working on the family farm, however, they have seen firsthand the necessity of acting as responsible stewards of their local environments. They hope that the water they are using will arrive clean and clear; they watch as runoff returns to the local watershed. They await the appearance of bees and other pollinators on their farms, knowing that these species will help their crops to grow. For this reason, young people who learn farming learn to appreciate their environments much more.
Generational Farms Preserve Agricultural Traditions
It’s easy to think of traditions as meaningless activities from the past, with little or no impact on the present generation. In agriculture, however, traditions are how the valuable knowledge of the past is preserved: They equip young farmers with techniques unique to their specific areas.
To offer an example, a local farm in a hot climate may have a tradition that watering is done at night or in the very early hours of the morning. If a large corporation purchases the farm and staffs it with outsiders, they may do away with this tradition, as they don’t see the value in it. However, night irrigation is absolutely a valid technique in regions where watering during the day may be affected by excessive evaporation. For this reason, preserving the tradition through generational farming may lead to a more efficient farm with a greater output.
Farming Fosters a Strong Work Ethic
Alongside the connection between the environment and food supply, another exists: the one between farmers’ work and the end result. Many people work jobs that are either physically or mentally demanding, but they are rarely able to see the direct outcome of their work. Rather, they are insulated by multiple layers from the final results of the industries they give so much time to. This is even true for children in school. They do a lot of classwork, but rarely do they truly understand why their work matters or what the point of it is.
For those working on a family farm, however, this isn’t the case. The children grow up able to see what happens when they put in effort—and what happens when they do not. Work hard, and watch the crops grow and thrive. It’s only by the labor of the farmers that agriculture can succeed, a fact that young people working on farms quickly learn, and one that can translate to other tasks and pursuits in life.
Teaching Inspires Future Generations to Support or Pursue Farming
Perhaps the greatest value that comes with teaching children the ways of the family farm is the one it places on farming itself. In an ever-changing world, traditional, small-scale farms, worked by knowledgeable, dedicated locals, are very important. The food they grow on these farms is shipped worldwide and used to support communities of all sizes in every country on the planet.
By teaching kids about the family farm, we are also teaching them to support other local farmers and to potentially pursue agriculture as a career. It is these young farmers who develop new and innovative farming techniques to improve output and reduce environmental impact. They contribute to strong, proud communities with a practical commitment to sustainability.
Family farms also teach young farmers to support one another, in turn helping to support the long-term viability of small-scale generational farming. One example of this is the potato farms in Washington State, which have formed the Washington State Potato Commission to promote sustainable local farming in their communities. These farmers teach their children their trade, and if you do the same on your farm, you can support local agricultural businesses around the entire country.
