WARNING: HOT TOPIC
- the work of producing crops and raising livestock; farming (Webster's 2003)
- the art of cultivating the ground; husbandry (Webster's 1877)
Holy COW!!!! (no pun intended) Have we as of yet seen such a discrepancy between definitions??? This goes from ART to WORK. What a tremendous shift.
When did this happen??
When American began to over produce (around WWI it really hit home, though it had been tough on farms since then) they switched to monoculture rather than sustenance farming, the excess of which were occasionally sold at market. After the WWI farming boom (caused by people in Europe were waging a war and had not time to fight, therefor opening that market to American produce) there was a farming depression. Farms were hit hard by the fall out of prices when the war ended effectively beginning the great depression over a decade early for farm families. Many factors play into this, such as an unregulated banking system, and an unregulated stock market, but in the end it led to thousands of small farms being converted into large land holdings. These large land holdings were worked by fewer people due to the efficiency of mechanization. Larger and larger machines worked the land until all hell broke loose and the top soil just blew away. (The Great Dust Bowl)
Do you see what happened??? People, real people, not people on machines, not people in offices far far away, but people, whose life and livelihood depended on that soil... LEFT. They were uprooted just as the land was. That is when the switch happened. That is when "cultivation" turned into "production", that is when art turned into work and husbandry into farming.
The Dust Bowl
The dust bowl is a direct result of the shift of agriculture from people to machines. I will again quote Wendell Berry... "as industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away by where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection."