OK, you know what I’m pretty tired of? The trope that SMALL farmers are great and LARGE farmers suck.

I’m a small farmer and I’m here to tell you it’s utter nonsense. Let me tell you about the landscape of farmers in my community. And yeah it’s a thread.

All of the oyster farming on Cape Cod is done by small farmers. Some of those farmers do a wonderful job. Others do a crappy job, and lie and cheat in the bargain. Any farmer can tell you which is which, but we probably won’t.

When you go to the farmers’ market, you have NO IDEA whether the farm you buy from does things well or poorly. Likewise, when you read about a farm growing corn and soy and wheat on thousands of Iowa acres you have NO IDEA whether that farm does things well or poorly.

But there is one decent indication of a farm doing things well. It prospers. And when businesses prosper, they tend to GROW. The biggest oyster farmer in my town is also the best. BIGNESS is often a sign that a farmer is good at her job. She is successful and she grows.

This isn’t always true, of course. And many excellent farmers stay small, either because they like it that way (we do), or because of circumstances - land or labor or markets are unavailable. But the idea that BIGNESS equals BADNESS has got to go.

And here’s the thing. It’s only SUCCESSFUL farmers who can afford to try things like cover cropping or complex rotations. Take cover cropping. It’s EXPENSIVE and RISKY. It might increase yields, might not. If you’re barely making ends meet, you can’t take the risk.

None of this means that vast swaths of corn and soy are a good thing. That landscape has caused big problems - nutrient run-off, degraded soil - but many big farmers are taking risks and spending money to fix it. And the BIGGER you are the MORE ACRES you can fix.

(And if you think that small farms don't cause run-off or degrade soil, there is not a shred of evidence for that.)

The problems with the labels we use to evaluate farms - small or large, organic or conventional, local or distant - do not tell us much about the farm’s practices. All of those can be either good or bad. But I get why consumers rely on them - they’re all we’ve got!

So I renew my call for a CERTIFICATE OF PRUDENCE, to indicate all-purpose responsible stewardship. It comes on every size and every kind of farm, and we need to be able to recognize and reward it. (Great! Now let’s all agree on a standard!) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/small-vs-large-which-size-farm-is-better-for-the-planet/2014/08/29/ac2a3dc8-2e2d-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html?utm_term=.b185b60b934c

Even though it’ll be a while til we have a good way for consumers to ID farming excellence, can we stop saying that SMALL is great and BIG is bad? Thank you and THE END.