“How was your sermon?” a friend asked Sunday afternoon. I forgot that I wrote about it last week, but was pleased she remembered.
“It went well,” I said. “The people were beautiful. They sang along with me and listened to every
word. I felt so encouraged by their
responses….” My friend grinned, hugged
me with congratulations, and went on with her day.
It was only after I got home that I
realized why I felt so heartened. “There
might be some hope for our towns yet,” I thought, an epiphany about the
sermon’s true purpose.
For years I have described myself as
a small-farm advocate. The substance of
the Gospel According to John Pitney is that the church has a right and a
responsibility to care about the structure of agriculture and be involved in
making it more sustainable and just.
This is true in California especially, since we lead the country in mega-farms
and the requisite “innovations.” Some of
those innovations make it possible to feed more people from land that would
normally feed only jackrabbits and rattlesnakes. Some of those innovations steal markets from
other regions where water is less scarce and climate less accommodating,
however.
Some of those innovations also steal
jobs, livelihoods, even whole industries.
And where the damage is felt first, second and third is in our rural
towns.
I didn’t speak Sunday about my fears
for our citrus belt towns. I sense an
earthquake coming as I watch farmhouses disappear and groves of navels being
pushed and replanted to mandarins destined for the mega-packing facilities in
Kern County. As these farms are
consolidated, the lands surrounding our towns are tended by mobile crews who
move from parcel to parcel with no one supervising the work or being there to
watch the results. Fewer acres are being
tended by people who live there year after year and know the wet spots, the
cold spots, the average crop, the normal bug population or how things are
varying this year from last.
Then there’s the ongoing mechanization
of the packinghouses, which is eliminating 75%- 90% of the jobs at each one. In the past, the availability of winter work
in citrus packing has made it possible for the laboring population to move up
occupationally and become permanent residents, keeping their kids in school and
becoming citizens. What will towns like
Lindsay do when they’re no longer incubators for immigrant stabilization and
progress? Lindsay’s city fathers and
mothers bemoan the loss of our middle class, but it’s the working people who
have kept us afloat so far. When they
leave, we’ll look more like empty Dust Bowl towns than orange-growing
communities.
Most of our town governments do not
see the connection between agriculture and Main Street. That’s unfortunate, but one role the people
of faith could adopt is to bring these realities to their attention. I look forward to singing and speaking more
with you in the future.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a small farm/town advocate who writes. You can send her your connectional thoughts
c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
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