Country life
Life is better on the farm, the sign says. We as practicing farmers, do we believe that?
Is farm life the best choice we ever made for ourself and our family?
Once you are in, it is not easy to back out again. There are a lot of commitments, especially with the bank.
But that is not the only thing, most of the time, we feel committed to our family too, for example if we run a sixth generation farm. We also feel committed to ourselves to make it work, because if not, we will loose the love of our life: the animals we care for and fields we work on together as a family and we will feel as if we will loose our freedom.
So, we do believe, life is better on the farm. We love what we do in freedom. Now that's something! Our whole life depends on the way we handle our business, the financial choices we make, the weather forecast and the health of our animals and crops. Pressure is on! But as a farmer we learned how to deal with that. We are used to accept challenges in life with sickness, storms and financial problems. So even when we go through rough times, with a lot of troubles, we are capable to look at the bright side and rebuild, restore and fix problems, over and over again. Never seen more flexible people than farmers. We say: "Just eat it, it's as it is." And with all of our colleague farmers, we are all together in this.
City life
In 1800 only two percent of all people lived in cities. Nowadays about 55 percent of world's population lives in cities. The prediction is that two/third of all people will live in cities in 2050. Do we realize how big the difference is between our lives compared to the lives of city people? Many people no longer have knowledge about farming and how their groceries are being produced. Many of them work in the city, in a big office, or store. Some have to work double shifts to meet ends. They travel home from work on busy roads, fetch some groceries, cook supper, do the laundry and watch tv for an hour or so, before they crawl into bed. Their children lead their school life, coming home playing some video games and if they are lucky, also playing outside for a bit.
How do we feed the world?
There are less farmers, many smaller farms are abandoned or sold. Less farmers carry the responsibility to feed more people. In 2050 almost 10 billion... 6,5 billion of them will live in cities.
So all good, we stand for what we believe in!
But here's the thing: because the world has to deal with environmental issues, the social climate changed. People are starting to question our good intentions. Now this hurts!