For the last two weeks I had the privilege of taking a class funded by the AMERC grant. The class was titled Rural Communities and Moral Concerns. The idea is to have an immersion experience into appalachian culture. To prep for our voyage into the many different economic and cultural experiences that the Ohio and Kentucky Appalachians had to offer we read some great books dealing with faith in Appalachia, big-business agriculture, agrarianism, and the coal mining industry.

The main chunk of our excursions took place in Holmes Co. Ohio, which happens to have the largest concentration of Amish people in the world. We visited a large scale dairy farm that was very well run, the Holme’s Co. Jr. Fair where we learned the importance of 4H in rural communities (and got to see some sweet tractor pulling action – a couple of movies should be posted soon) and fill our arteries with the best fried foods the Appalachians have to offer, an Amish auction, and the farm of David Kline – an Amish Bishop and writer.

Back home in Jessamine Co. Kentucky we were able to visit a couple of small farms. One of which was making the transition from growing tobacco to raising goats! This happens to be an important shift in Appalachian agriculture since the sun is setting on Tobacco farming.

It is easy for us to become disconnected with the agricultural processes that bring food to our table. Before taking this class I was unaware of the economics, politics, and environmental issues that are intertwined with agriculture. We were able to see first hand the toll that the vertical intergration of the large agricultural firms has taken on local farms, as well as the widespread market control that large seed producers have over food production. We were also able to see the comeback of small farms in Holmes Co. where David Kline informed us that local farmers were now beginning to outbid developers for land – something that has been unheard of thus far.

My apologies for the rambling nature of this post, I hope to post more concerning the specific things we covered in this class, many of which were not even mentioned above. Also, the people that made up our class were beautiful… consider this a shoutout if any of you guys are reading this!

Posted In: social-issues agriculture

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon