What will our agricultural system look like in 2020? It's hard to predict what anything will look like 7 years from now let alone something as fraught with uncertainty as agriculture. A lot can happen in 7 years especially given the rapidly growing pace of technology. With the birth of the Internet came the ability to share and gain insight into unknown topics at exceedingly fast speeds. It's nice to dream of a world where food is grown a few miles away and you can buy it at the convenience store up the street. This might seem like a distant dream but if our Young Farmer Screening Series has shown us anything, it's that this is in fact a reality. It's probably a lot easier to find biodynamically raised beef in large metropolitan areas like NYC, Los Angeles and Chicago but the local food movement is spreading rapidly throughout our great land.
Mr. Salatin doesn't really lean one way or the other when asked this question. He offers his hopes for our agricultural system but doesn't give a solid opinion. The resources are at our fingertips, literally. There may only be one Polyface Farms out there but similarly run operations are popping up all throughout the country. It truly is up to us as consumers to help give this movement the momentum it needs to take on big agriculture. I've been living in New York City for a little over a year and I can sense the changes in the way people seek out and acquire food. In the small Florida town where I grew up, farmers markets and CSAs are sprouting up left and right. This may not seem like a big deal but before I moved to NYC those such things were nowhere to be found.
People are hungry for change and when that change happens, embrace it. If a farmers market pops up in your town, go out of your way to meet the folks that help make it happen. The people who put it on do it out of love. There is a multitude of different online and offline resources available that can help make the local food movement more than a movement- a way of life. If we cement local food into our daily routines agriculture will start changing fast. Our film and our message are about community. It's about understanding and becoming a part of an amazing movement that can change our country for the better. When posed with the question, 'What will agriculture look like in 2020?', let's punt on answering it like Joel, let's just go out and show what it will look like in 2020. That can be our answer.
