Coming from a background in agricultural economics, I’ve (very understandably) often thought about productivity being a primary way of gauging the contribution of a farm to the economy, and perhaps even more broadly to humanity. As the saying goes, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Economics relies on quantifying what can be measured in money, and that is how it tends to assign value as well. I will admit that I tried to think of a graph to go with this discussion.

And over time, I’ve had to make space for the ways that production is a very limited way of understanding farming, especially where we only value what we can measure financially. Typically, that means the highest production, or sometimes the most cost effective production. And, valuing what we can measure financially can create distortions in what we prioritize, both individually and collectively. Absolutely, there are various approaches that attempt to translate some of these non-monetary aspects of farms into monetary terms, such as quantifying ecological benefits and costs, premiums for various production practices, or systems of certifying carbon credits, for example. However, these methodologies typically fall short of adequately capturing things that are inherently beyond measure, and that are not able to be sufficiently quantified using a metric of money.

What is it that’s not able to be captured? Farms are places of collaboration with the natural world. What farms are and what they do is far beyond what they produce. Many farms are, and many more farms can be, places of fruitfulness, flourishing, and nourishment of many forms:

• Farms can create greater harmony between humans and the environment.

• Farms can be places of community.

• Farms can be places of beauty.

• Farms can be places of art and creativity.

• Farms can be places of inner renewal and rest.

• Farms can provide habitat for native plants and animals.

• Farms can be spaces of mindfulness and tending to our inner world.

• Farms can be spaces of learning and growing our knowledge and skills.

• Farms can be places of exploration and experimentation.

• Farms can be places of remembering

• Farms can be places where humans remember and cultivate connection with the rest of the natural world.

• Farms allow humans to be in reciprocity with the Earth, to connect and contribute back to the flourishing of the environment.

  
  

Farms are dynamic places, where people, plants, and animals come and go. On farms, people, plants, and animals interact. Here, people bring something to give and take their experience with them. Farms evolve and change with the day-to-day weather, with the seasons, with how they are cared for, with the other plants and animals and all sorts of other organisms present in the environment. These are overlapping and interconnected webs that science often does not fully understand, and that economics often falls short in fully quantifying.

Perhaps even more detrimentally than inadequately valuing the multitude of activities that currently happen on farms, a focus only on production narrows the field of vision for the possibilities of what farms can do and create.

In a world where many folks are incredibly disconnected from how food is grown, having more farms focused on this much broader definition of fruitfulness instead of productivity could generate significant change. This disconnection has profound implications for individual lives, societal values, and collective wisdom. What could farms and society look like if more of these aspects of farms were embraced and valued?

We don’t have to wait for every farm to change in order for more flourishing to happen. Each farm that incorporates even small steps towards creating more opportunities for the farm to provide nourishment in many forms can create ripples through its environment and local community. Further, while the degree of disconnection from the farm varies from one place to the next, almost all places could benefit from greater connectedness to farms and all the possibilities they hold.

--2/5/25

Note: An introduction to this series and links to other topics in the series can be found here.