I was reading through other posts on the farm question and came across one that i found interesting. The person had said that a farm was less natural because you have to work on it and that a garden was more natural because it was done for pleasure. I disagree. I believe that farms are completely a part of nature.
Let's back up to a simple definition on nature (found at dictionary.com): surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities.
Using this definition, neither farms or gardens fall under the category of 'nature' because neither one exists independently of our activities. I thought that the definition of nature itself adding a new, complicate dimension to the discussion. But for arguments sake, i am going to say that both farms and gardens are a part of nature.
Why should work hinder a farm's qualifications for being a part of nature? We must work in gardens as well to keep them flourishing.
I can understand where people are coming from with the stereotype that farms now a days are a complete disaster area. Cows receiving unnatural hormone injections, dozens of chickens being locked together in a single cage for their entire lives; these are the examples that society is flooded with from the media especially. If this was my only point of reference when i thought about farms, then i might agree that they can scarcely be considered anything natural.
However, for a week this summer i worked on a farm. The main purpose of the farm was to produce natural, raw milk. This means that the milk is not pasteurized and the cows are not being injected with crazy growth hormones. They would roam in large grass expanses and get plenty of exercise. And to talk about natural, raw milk is one of the HEALTHIEST and most natural things a human can consume. The stereotype with raw milk is that it is unsanitary and can make you sick, however that stereotype is outdated. The milk is completely fine if (just like most things we consume) it is being bottled in a clean and sanitary place. (which it was as i spend some time in the bottling room wearing gloves, hair nets, aprons, etc) On top of the natural milk being produced, the farm also had (can you guess it??) a garden! Rhubarb was one of the best things grown and it was used for all sorts of foods, pies, etc. These people really lived off the land, ate as naturally and simply as i knew and were definitely immersed in the natural world.
Humans manipulate both gardens and farms to get what they want from each. However, if people can educate themselves about what many farms are actually like in reality, versus the stereotypes the media like to portray(which is hard to do without something like a first hand experience) than i believe that society would have a better relationship with farms and therefore see how they are just as much a part of nature as gardens are. (Which, according to dictionary.com, neither should be considered a part of nature to begin with- but that's a different discussion!)
1 comment:
That was my blog you were talking about and after our discussion in class and after reading your post I still feel the same way I did when I wrote my blog. However, I do want to clarify like I did in class that my definition of a farm was more on the basis of the big-scale ‘factory farms’ as someone put it in class. And by this, I mean the farms that use mass amounts of pesticides and genetical engineering to produce a large amount of food regardless of whether it tastes delicious. I do agree that technically neither farms nor gardens are apart of nature (based on your dictionary.com definition) however, in my personal beliefs and views on gardens, I believe the difference between gardens and farms are what I talked about in my blog. I never meant to give off the notion that I thought gardens were more apart of nature than farms, but using the term ‘factory farms’ I still do believe that gardens are more natural than the ‘factory farms.’ Farms can be wider scale gardens and with these I believe that is for personal pleasure and you are more likely to care about the taste and quality of the product because it is going on your kitchen table as opposed to being shipped out in mass quantities. It’s for the reason of less ‘artificialness’ in gardens that I believe they (including wide scale gardens such as farms) are more natural than wider scale ‘factory farms.’
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