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with machines instead of people? And is a worker necessarily improved by being replaced by a machine? Does a worker invariably work better, more ably, with more interest and satisfaction, when his power is mechanically magnified? And is a worker better off working at a “pedestrian” farm task or unemployed in an urban ghetto? In which instance is his country better off?
    I have belabored Secretary Bergland’s statement at such length not because it is so odd, but because it is so characteristic of the dominant American approach to agriculture. He is using—unconsciously, I suspect—the language of agricultural industrialism, which fails to solve agricultural problems correctly because it cannot understand or define them as agricultural problems.
     
    I WILL NOW try to define an approach to agriculture that is agricultural, that will lead to proper solutions, and that will, in consequence, safeguard and promote the health of the great unit of food production, which includes us all and all of our country. In order to do this I will deal with four problems, which seem to me inherent in the discipline of farming, and which are practical in the sense that their ultimate solutions cannot occur in public places—in organizations, in markets, or in policies—but only on farms . These are the problems of scale, of balance,
of diversity, of quality. That these problems cannot be separated, and that no one of them can be solved without solving the others, testifies to their authenticity.
    1. The Problem of Scale. The identification of scale as a “problem” implies that things can be too big as well as too small, and I believe that this is so. Technology can grow to a size that is first undemocratic and then inhuman. It can grow beyond the control of individual human beings—and so, perhaps, beyond the control of human institutions. How large can a machine be before it ceases to serve people and begins to subjugate them?
    The size of landholdings is likewise a political fact. In any given region there is a farm size that is democratic, and a farm size that is plutocratic or totalitarian. A great danger to democracy now in the United States is the steep decline in the number of people who own farmland—or landed property of any kind. (According to a just-published report of the General Accounting Office, “Today, it is estimated that less than one-half of all farmland is owned by the operator.”) Earl Butz has suggested that this is made up for by the increased numbers of people who own insurance policies. But the value of insurance policies fluctuates with the value of money, whereas the real value of land never varies; it is always equal to the value of survival, of life. When this value is controlled by a wealthy or powerful minority, then democracy is reduced to mere governmental forms , easy to destroy or ignore.
    Moreover, in any given region there is a limit beyond which a farm outgrows the attention, affection, and care of a single owner.
    The size of fields is also a matter of agricultural concern. Fields can be too big to permit effective rotation of grazing, or to prevent erosion of land in cultivation. In general, the steeper the ground, the smaller should be the fields. On the steep slopes of the Andes, for instance, agriculture has survived for thousands of years. This survival has obviously depended on holding the soil in place, and the Andean peasants have an extensive
methodology of erosion control. Of all their means and methods, none is more important than the smallness of their fields—which is permitted by the smallness of their technology, most of the land still being worked by hand or with oxen.
    2. The Problem of Balance. Finding the correct ratio between people and land, so that maintenance always equals production. This is obviously related to the problem of scale. In the correct solution to these problems, such problems as soil erosion and soil compaction will be solved.
    But also each farm and