But around the world, I am not alone: The United Nations estimates<br />that more than two billion people are farmers, most of them small farmers; that’s about one in three people on the planet.<br />An English Sheep Farmer’s View of Rural America -<br />By JAMES REBANKSMARCH 1, 2017<br />MATTERDALE, England — I am a traditional small farmer in the North of England.<br />But for my entire life, my own country has apathetically accepted an American model of farming and food retailing, mostly through a belief<br />that it was the way of progress and the natural course of economic development.<br />Significant areas of rural America are broken, in terminal economic decline, as food production<br />heads off to someplace else where it can be done supposedly more efficiently.<br />I have come home convinced that it is time to think carefully, both within America<br />and without, about food and farming and what kind of systems we want.<br />James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) is the author of the memoir “The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches From an Ancient Landscape.”<br />A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 2, 2017, in The International New York Times.<br />With the presidential campaign over and a president in the White House whom rural Kentuckians<br />helped elect, the new political establishment might want to think about this carefully.
