In the summer or fall of 1974, I read some books about factory farming, and decided that I wanted no part of it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I thought I might like to farm. But I didn't know the economics of it. Teachers basically steered me away from it.
Factory farming came about from a moral race to the bottom, with corporations vying against each other to produce more and bigger animals with less care at lower cost.
But as a young kid, I never did, really have an ambition to be a farmer. I never thought, gee, I would like to farm, and I want to raise these crops. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.
I worked on a farm for a little bit.
By the time I was leaving school, there were no factories. There was no industry.
I'm glad I don't have to make a living farming. Too much hard work. Too many variables you don't have control over, like, is it going to rain? All I can say is, god bless the real farmers out there.
As a society, we devalued farming as an occupation and encouraged the best students to leave the farm for 'better' jobs in the city. We emptied America's rural counties in order to supply workers to urban factories.
My dad farmed, my granddad was a farmer. I wanted to be a farmer.
It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an agriculturist.
I still love farming and gardening and things like that in the summertime.