The Rural Voice, 1989-05, Page 29that a London Free Press editorial
writer described it as "sweeping
overstatement."
On the one hand, van Donkersgoed
says, he appreciates very much the
bishops' concern for farm families and
agroecology. But he's concerned that
the statement doesn't address the root
creation, forgetting that quality of life
is dependent on quality of environ-
ment. We've made the method of
exchange, the free market, the goal.
"In that sense society today has
gone backwards, it hasn't progressed,
because we lack the ability to have
real goals for ourselves, human goals,
Before casting stones at agri-business, government, and
international agreements, van Donkersgoed suggests, farmers
might look at the way "that they too are putting a lot of pressure
on the environment and they too in their choices have reduced an
awful lot of farming to simply economics."
of the problem: that farm families
have been "swamped" in "an atmos-
phere of public rhetoric that puts down
what's really important, what's really
human, what really makes for the
quality of life."
Before casting stones at agri-
business, government, and interna-
tional agreements, van Donkersgoed
suggests, farmers might look at the
way "that they too are putting a lot of
pressure on the environment and they
too in their choices have reduced an
awful lot of farming to simply
economics."
The issue comes down to
fundamental definitions: what is
"progress," what is "quality of life"?
And what, indeed, is "agriculture"?
One aspect of agriculture's definition,
van Donkersgoed says, is "service to
community."
"There is an inherent quality of
agriculture that is not only the life-
blood of us, as people — and especial-
ly of us as people as there are growing
numbers of us — but it is also the very
lifeblood of the earth and the environ-
ment as a whole. It's this whole
growing process. It is this thin layer
of soil on the surface of this huge
globe that we live on."
As a society, however, he says,
we've lost sight of value, of the nature
and origins of quality. "We've turned
the Gross National Product into our
high, into our religion." And in the
name of that idol, the market, we have
neglected our role as stewards of
and in ways we've simply allowed
the objective market out there to
replace our inability to set goals for
ourselves."
"So what if you've got another
bushel of corn per acre this year," he
asks rhetorically, "if as a result you've
got a whole lot more nitrate going to
the water table or more phosphorus
piggybacking on sediment going to a
stream? That is not progress."
"I have no difficulty working with
the free market as a mechanism of ex -
from the very source of his well-being.
It sets a standard of happiness that
inevitably creates failure.
The relentless pressure that is
beginning to make the environment
"come apart at the seams" is obvious,
van Donkersgoed says. "It should be
as obvious that there is also that strain
on human beings themselves ... that
it's resulting in so many of our fellow
citizens not, quote, making it, unquote,
in the cash economy. And you can see
that even though we've talked about
surpluses of food in this decade, the
number of people in the food bank
lines in the cities has grown. And
that's because the more we define
quality of life and progress as simply
economics, the more people are not
going to make it."
Farm families, he adds, may
understand better than most urban
people what it means to have quality
of life. But that understanding is no
longer holding the rural community
together. The way our society is
driven by the cash economy may be
fundamentally urban, van Donkers-
goed says, "but because of modern
communication, because of the
modern linkage between urban and
rural, we have inevitably been wound
up, caught up, in the rhetoric of urban
"1 think farm families should have a reasonable standard
of living, as good as the small entrepreneur in town, but that
standard, if that becomes one's goal, will not be delivered by
the free market or the cash economy."
change between people and peoples,"
he adds. "But at no time would I let
the free market establish what my
goals are. At no time would I let the
marketplace define what is quality of
life. We are more than economic
beings ... We are religious beings. It
doesn't make sense to ignore that."
The connections are intricate but
adamant. Whether one shares the
Christian convictions and metaphors
or not, defining progress as a product
purely of the cash economy is philo-
sophically and practically unsound.
It severs man from his environment,
society, and rural, increasingly, rather
than being able to define itself, has
increasingly been swamped by the ...
rhetoric that has developed in urban
society." An analogy is the relative
size and influence of American culture
next to Canadian culture.
The complicity of rural people in
embracing that rhetoric, van Donkers-
goed adds, makes it hard for farm
leaders to identify a rural voice. What
unites farmers? van Donkersgoed is
asked.
"Economics never unites. And as
we adopt the rhetoric more vigorously,
MAY 1989 27