Small Farmer's Journal

The agricultural revolution occurring in Cuba today is not about communism or capitalism or Fidel or Raul Castro. Rather it is about an energetic and creative population of rural and urban farmers who were able to respond to an unusual set of historical circumstances.

Call them cockleburs, stick buttons, beggar’s buttons, or just plain nuisances, they are rife this time of year, clinging to anything and anyone that moves about in the countryside. It’s not too difficult to pick them off a pair of blue jeans, but they’re mean on sweaters with their tenacious little hooks. They are the leading cause of “bad hair days” among farm animals.

In effect, farmers increasingly have been left to fend for themselves. They operate under intense pressure at the most vulnerable end of so-called commodity value-chains. There is money being made in prairie agriculture, but increasingly it flows through farmers’ hands; this reality is reflected in the growing gap between their gross and net incomes. At the same time, farmers ar...

I was fortunate to grow up in an area where there were men still working cattle, accomplishing meaningful tasks on their farms and in the woods. Because they were making part of their living using oxen, I put great value in the details, such as the equipment they used and how the work was performed. One such individual is my neighbor Frank Scruton, who I have profiled in this is...

Dixon was once known as the “Lamb Capital of the World,” because more sheep were raised here than in any other region in the world. At one time, there were about 10,000 sheep for every resident in the city. Prior to the lifting of the lamb embargo in 1965, lamb was the primary industry in Dixon, with dairying a close second. New Zealand imports have seriously impacted the sheep ...