It’s not too difficult to imagine a time and a place where there is a thriving agricultural community where people actually take the time to meet their neighbors, and they develop a community where they go to church together, they work together, and they support each other throughout the year. Sadly, we now live in a world where everything is very independently minded, and there is little sense of community.
We are also approaching the era where the farmers and the tradesmen of our society are starting to age, and this does not bode well for the future of these industries. Far too many young people are being told that there is no money in anything but through a job that can only be acquired after having gone to college. This means that there are fewer people entering these other jobs.
Joel Salatin, in his book, Fields of Farmers, describes how to view the internship process as a way of handing down information and knowledge from one generation to the next. He goes on to explain that the internship that he runs at Polyface Farm is very intense, and he recognizes that it is not for everyone; however, he does realize that it is through internships like this that people can get their feet wet without having to take on the risk themselves.
He goes through and describes how the days are scheduled so as to give the interns responsibility, but also allow them to learn as much as they can during their time at his farm. He takes the time to break it down for those who would be mentors, and he breaks it down separately for those who wish to be interns. He takes the time to explain the reasoning behind some of the policies and expectations that he has on his farm, and gives them as a guideline that can be used as desired for anyone who is trying to start out her own internship program.
Very early on he states that the interns should not be looked upon as just a source of cheap labor because they can be very expensive especially with food and board, not to mention the costly mistakes that can occur from being new to something. He gives multiple comical examples of how things that seem like fairly common sense can be messed up by those with good intentions. This humor and use of storytelling that he uses throughout the book make the book much more personal and light-hearted.
He also states that if a business is at the point where they think they need to interns to help the business run smoother then the business is not ready to take on interns. No matter how nice it may seem to have someone new come in, if the business can’t survive without the help of the interns then they shouldn’t be there. Reasons for this include: the interns will need to be shown how to do things which will in turn take you away from doing the projects which are more important, they will amplify any stresses that are currently happening as you now have to deal with additional people, and it allows the interns to be lazier because they know that the business can’t run without them, so they can take advantage of that.
Salatin continues by describing how important the role of community is within these internship programs. At his farm there is communal housing for the males and the females in separate locations. Furthermore, they all share a common evening meal Monday through Friday which allows everyone to really get to know each other better. During the course of the four month internship he says that his family get emotionally attached to the interns, and this is done on purpose because it is much easier to care for someone when they know how much you care for them. If they see that you are willing to be out in the hot or the cold with them doing the worst jobs, then they will jump at the chance to please you.
At Polyface Farm there are several businesses that are run in parallel with the main farming business. Many of these smaller businesses have spawned from successful interns who saw a problem and were willing to stick around to run a separate business. He gave many examples of people who had started successful dairies, gave tours, or grew a garden and cooked the meals for the interns. All of these were examples of people who saw a problem, and were willing to jump at the chance to take on the risks of the project.
Salatin states that one of the many reasons that younger people don’t go into farming is that they have been told all their lives that there was no money in farming, and they didn’t want to be stuck in something where they didn’t think they could be successful. He also shares that often children of farmers are told that there is only enough income from the farm to maintain one person’s salary which in turn causes the kids to go off and find a “real job”. When the father gets old enough where he can no longer run the farm he asks if his children will take over, but by now they would all have to give up the lives that they have built in order to something that they were told wasn’t profitable. This isn’t appealing to most, and so the farm ends up getting neglected, and it is no longer the same as it was.
One way to counteract this as Salatin explains is to encourage the children when they are young to develop their own businesses which can be used in conjunction with the main family business and can grow into something that can be quite profitable. He goes further to explain that one way this can occur is by expanding vertically. For instance, if the father is a corn farmer and makes a living selling corn as a commodity, then another business which could be good to go along with this would be to set up a mill and grind the corn into corn meal or even take it a step further and sell cornbread.
The ideas for innovation are abundant if you can get up the gumption to try. There’s no reason for all of the old farms to fall apart and become neglected while there are so many young people who would actually like to be able to start farming if they had the ability to do so.
Overall, this was a good book as it gave a fresh insight into how much we need to have a transfer of knowledge and passion for farming from the older generations to the younger generations. While it is not possible for everyone to have an internship program like this, this is a call to farmers saying that they should be open to the idea of allowing someone to come in and work with them so that the knowledge is not lost.