Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey
by James Rebanks
Pastoral Song is about how farming has changed and developed from the Post-war period to today.
There are three main sections.
The first is colored by the boyhood memories of the author, James Rebanks, as he learns to love farming while helping his grandfather on their family’s traditional mixed-use farm.
The second section describes a young adult working hard to help his father navigate the race to industrialize and modernize their farm in the 80s and 90s. They cut down on the variety of crops and animals. And they introduce fertilizers and pesticides to their farm. One can clearly understand that deviating from the race to modernization isn’t an easy choice for farmers to make. Given a society that is now majority urban, there just aren’t as many skilled laborers as there used to be. Farmers must mechanize or disappear. Mechanization engenders indebtedness. Indebtedness pushes the small family farmer off his land and the farm into the hands of ever-larger industrial farms.
Finally, Rebanks describes how he is adapting his farm to the present understanding of ecology, economics, and sustainability. In light of the problems that industrialized farming brings to farmers, the land, and to society, Rebanks describes the remediation projects that he has begun on his farm. He writes about possible sustainable alternatives, more in line with traditional farming than to the melange of industry and agriculture that up until recently has been the only viable possibility.
Pastoral Song is an easy book to read. It is sometimes poetic, often peppered with relatable observations, even quaint. Because it paints a large picture of the forces at work in Western agriculture over the last 70 years it gives voice to the dawning realization many of us have that farming, coupled with profit motives, results in sub-optimal outcomes when considering the animals, planet, farmers, and consumer health.
What brought me to this book?
It was recommended by someone in my narrow friend group on Goodreads. I didn’t know anything about it except that it had a long wait list at the local library; usually a good sign!
What I did know is that I, along with many in our society, feel the pull to learn more about traditional agriculture. That I feel estranged from the modern world and how distant I am from the things that matter. That was enough of an argument to get me to take the book out.
Anyone looking for an easy read about the recent back and forth between tradition and modernity on the farmyard would do well to read Rebanks’ book.
It couples well with Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Eating Animals,’ which shares in criticizing the modern agro-industry.
Did you read Pastoral Song? What were your thoughts?