Beyond “Survival of the Fittest”: Pastoral Resources for Rebuilding Rural Community
by Cameron Harder
(In Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World: Essays in Honour of Roger C. Hutchinson, eds Phyllis Airhart, Marilyn Legge, Gary Radcliffe. Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2002.)
There is a painful discrepancy in rural Canada that I have struggled to understand and cope with as a parish pastor and theologian. Roger Hutchinson has helped me find the tools to begin that task.
Here is the incongruity: On the one hand rural Canadians long for a vibrant future for their
communities. A survey of seven thousand rural Canadians undertaken by the federal government
in 1997 and a series of eighty-seven rural Community Round Table discussions held in Manitoba
in the 1990's yielded a common vision. Participants said they hope for: “self-sustaining
communities with ample opportunities for employment,” “public recognition of the value of rural
Canada to the identity and well-being of the nation,” “the opportunity to make informed decisions
about their own future,” “improvements in the quality of life,” “access to health care and
education at a reasonable cost,” “communities rich in culture and supporting family living”
“services and employment to retain and attract people,” “educational opportunities and
community service that will sustain steady growth.”
On the other hand, this vision of lively rural community seems far off the path of present
demographic trends. Outside of urban hinterlands, rural population has been declining steadily for
decades. The absolute number of people living on farms in 1996 is one quarter of what it was in
1931. The percentage of Canadians living on farms has dropped during that period from 32% to
less than 3%. 25% of those who made their primary living from agriculture in 1998 no longer did
so in 2001.
This rapid population decline has been accompanied by a savage dismantling of the
rural institutions that sustain healthy human life. Churches, schools, grain elevators, hospitals,
recreational facilities, hotels, agribusinesses, stores, post offices, even coffee shops have closed
down or been forced to move into larger centers.
What makes it so difficult for most rural communities to implement the vision described
above? In Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy
of the Farm Crisis, Christopher Lind exposes the process by which globalization of agricultural
markets and agribusiness rips decision-making power from the hands of local communities. That
loss of self-determination is largely reflected, he says, in the dismantling of the rural institutions
that have provided a structure for communal conversation and processes for common action. It
takes a community to implement a vision. Community, in Lind’s eyes, is defined by relations of
trust, interdependence, caring and commitment. However the agricultural practices and structures
that have developed in Canada over the last century have fostered competitiveness, domination
and indifference.
They reflect an ideology that I will refer to in this article as “survival of the
fittest.”
The deep fissures that have developed from it are obvious. Growing farms swallow
struggling neighbors in order to expand their own operations. Farmers who could profitably
cooperate in their operations cannot find the courage to open their books to each other. Small
hog farmers and acreage owners protest the development of mammoth hog facilities while others
welcome the promise of jobs.
Town businesses struggle under the weight of unpaid farm debts,
while farmers resent the rising prices for inputs charged by local dealers. Organic farmers battle
neighbors whose chemicals or genetically-modified seeds drift onto their fields. Western Canadian
Wheat Growers battle for a freer market with NFU’ers who support the Canadian Wheat Board’s
marketing monopoly. Non-natives resent natives who have purchased farm land through the
settlement of aboriginal treaties and then taken the land out of production.
In other words, it is not enough that many individuals share broad values about community revitalization. Rural communities need a place, a process and a philosophy which will support the rebuilding of trust, clear analysis of rural problems and construction of effective plans for action.
As far as place is concerned, the church is one of the few institutions remaining in many rural towns that has a mandate for building community. Rural congregations are uniquely positioned to foster the relations of trust and the depth of conversation necessary to help a community grapple effectively with its future. This article is an effort to offer some assistance. It leads the reader into an analysis and theological challenge of the survival of the fittest philosophy that supports the divisiveness and in so doing also demonstrates a process for community conversation that may result in the adoption of a new worldview, that can truly sustain rural communities.
I must acknowledge the debt I owe in this work to Roger Hutchinson. I began a reading
course with him during my doctoral studies at the Toronto School of Theology. To my delight, I
discovered that he had grown up on a farm in Alberta just outside the town where I was a pastor
at the time. He was familiar with the parameters of the rural crisis that I was investigating and
eventually became my thesis advisor. In addition to sharing his expertise, he was warm and
hospitable (underrated qualities in education!). He also pressed me to remain honest, to stay
grounded in the data of my interviews and open to the input of many voices. Perhaps most
importantly, his analysis of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline debates helped me to recognize a
process for fruitful discussion that might work in rural communities.
Hutchinson noted that the pipeline debates often stumbled because participants were not communicating on the same level of discourse. Some were sharing personal stories while others were trying to ascertain publicly accessible facts; some were making ethical judgments while others were expressing post-ethical beliefs.
Hutchinson recognized that each form of discourse has its own integrity. Personal stories are subjective and in one sense non-debatable. But telling them allows the participants to hear the personal impact–practical, relational and emotional–that the present situation has had on others. It helps them open to each other, take each other into account. Discussions of fact help participants become aware of consequences that their personal position has tended to ignore. Of course facts are weighted, valued, differently. One consequence is regarded as trivial by some and vitally important by others. This is where discussions often break down. In the apparent interest of tolerant multi-culturalism, Canadian public debate rarely goes beyond the simple identification of competing values.
As Hutchinson points out, however, values are not free-floating. They are embedded in worldviews, in belief systems that broadly inform people’s decisions. These are based on fundamental assumptions that are difficult to debate. They are even more difficult to change because they are fortified by cultural relations, histories and rituals. But identifying them at least allows participants to speak each others’ languages. It reveals a pattern to actions that previously seemed chaotic or confusing to other participants. It also allows conversation partners to bring inconsistencies to light: “If you believe this, then why are you doing that?”
Finally, exposing underlying belief systems opens up new options for the future. The status quo tends to acquire a patina of sacred inevitability: things are the way they are because God (or fate) has designed them to be that way. History, however, tells us that our social and political orders are constructed rather than inevitable. Hearing how others envision human life opens the possibility of a future that was previously unimaginable because hope had been captive to assumptions now revealed to be historically conditioned and not absolute.
It must be said, on the one hand, that this form of community conversation is not easy in a
rural context. As Kathleen Norris points out in Dakota, the “myth of independence . . . makes it
difficult to come together and work for the things that might benefit us all.”
It is also difficult to
gather around one table farmers who are insolvent and their neighbors who would like to buy
them out, town businesspeople who resent the supports given to farmers but not to them, bankers
who want to make sure their loan portfolios are in good shape, consumers concerned about the
price of food and so on. Envy and suspicion tend to replace trust. Competition is seen as more
life-giving than cooperation. Open conversation is severely restricted.
On the other hand I believe that the will to engage in this sort of conversation exists in our
rural communities. In the federal survey of rural Canadians, respondents expressed a strong desire
for better cooperation between farm and non-farm interests in local communities. They also were
convinced that rural areas have an unusual capacity for such community spirit if there is the
leadership to encourage and direct it.
Local clergy already carry some of those leadership
responsibilities.
The challenge for rural churches today is to take the bit in their teeth and initiate the conversation. I suggest that it might move in four stages: 1) Attend to what is happening. This involves listening to each other stories, paying attention to the facts, doing some research. 2) Identify the underlying values and beliefs. 3) Assess the “truthfulness” of these beliefs–their fit with the facts, their capacity to carry rural hopes and dreams. 4) Nurture a rebellious imagination. Allow the Bible to re-frame what is happening and open up alternatives. Find together a worldview which is truly “fit” for rural people to live in.
I will try to show the reader how I have moved through this process in my own research and how the process might be used in a rural community.
Attend to What is Happening
We can never get a full picture of what is happening of course; reality is wonderfully,
frustratingly complex. To sketch it then requires attending to some details and ignoring others.
To do that we use filters controlled by our beliefs about what really matters.
In a sense then
one’s goal becomes one’s starting point; it is necessary to have some intuition of what is going on
in order to know what in all the detail is significant. One hopes, of course, that close attention to
the detail will modify, perhaps radically, those initial beliefs.
I began my research by relying on the intuitions of rural people as to what mattered in
their context. I asked them to tell me their stories.
I heard a great deal of anguish. Allow me to
share a couple of representative examples. Henry told me that he is leaving the land he pioneered.
He said his farming operation is small by today=s standards but has generally been debt-free. It
has provided a decent living for himself and his family. Why then is he leaving? Because he
cannot shake a deep sense of grief and despair. One farm in his area has expanded to absorb all
the others leaving a once-thriving community with only three families. There is no one to visit, no
one for his daughter to date, no curling teams, no health facilities, no churches left. The
community that he loved has been swallowed up.
Harold, another farmer, described how he had bought land in the 80's, rented more and purchased large equipment to farm it. But low grain prices, sky-rocketing rentals and interest rates put him into unrepayable debt. Worst of all he lost his land and his home to a neighbor. Harold’s creditor (a fellow church member) sold the property below market price, just a day or so before Harold raised the money to pay off his debt. A number of relationships were damaged by that experience. Harold and his wife stopped attending church because the creditor’s presence enraged him: “I was like a rattlesnake–ready to strike” he said. Even on the street they could not make eye contact. Harold also dropped out of leadership positions in the community, ashamed of his bankruptcy and the image of “one who doesn’t pay his debts” that he felt it gave him. His formerly positive relationship to his neighbor was dead: “I pulled his daughter out of the ditch and I took the tractor over and pulled him out too one time.” “Now you’d just leave him there, wouldn’t you” his wife said. “Yeah, I probably would.”
The grief, anger, and shame I heard in these stories is common. But it is not commonly
expressed in public. The suffering in rural communities tends to be hidden because public
exposure of one’s wounds is shameful. To appear too vulnerable causes a loss of face. And if it
exposes the weakness of a community, the whole community is shamed.
So the painful stories
are rarely brought (voluntarily) to light. As Kathleen Norris notes, a good story in a rural
community is one that
doesn’t remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles.
Norris says that local histories tend to tell stories of “perseverance made heroic” in a steady
march of progress from homesteading to the present.
Clergy told me that they encountered this
same phenomenon in their rural churches. “It’s denial, sheer denial,” one lamented. The denial
allows dominant belief systems to continue unchallenged because their real effects are obscured.
It is not easy to help a community attend to its suffering. Those who are relatively
advantaged by the present arrangements–wealthy farmers perhaps, or agribusiness managers–have
a stake in leaving things as they are. Walter Brueggemann notes that it is not the managers of the
status quo who hope for deep and lasting change: “People excessively committed to present
power arrangements and present canons of knowledge tend not to wait expectantly for the
newness of God.”
“Who hopes?” he asks. It is articulate sufferers–“those who enter their
grief, suffering and oppression, who bring it to speech, who publicly process it and move through
it and beyond. They are the ones who are surprised to find, again and again, that hope and social
possibility come in the midst of such grief (cf. Rom.5:3).”
A first step then is identifying sufferers and helping them to find their voice. Clergy have the freedom to visit people’s homes when they notice signs of withdrawal or distress. Gentle but firm probing may offer families their first opportunity to speak openly about financial difficulties. Contact can then be made through the pastor with others in similar difficulty (preferably in another parish). Together in relative safety farmers are able to speak about their distress and feel the shame diminish as they find that other respectable people are struggling too.
Clergy also have an important role in revealing suffering as something which belongs not outside of God, forsaken by God, but (since the Forsaken One is God) at God’s heart. Worship is key. Too often it has tended to soothe the grief and anger of those hurt by the current economic arrangements and to assuage the guilt of those who benefit from or contribute to the injustice in them. In so doing worship only serves to draw off energies for change. However it is not soothing that sufferers need as much as lament. Strangely, there are very few laments in our Lutheran hymnals, although the psalms have many. Clergy might invite their poets to write some pointed words to a good hymn tune, words that capture the particular anguish and grief that sits so heavily at the heart of shrinking communities. And their preaching must be contextual. Preachers are effective when they carefully explore the real world of their community–its fading hopes, its fractured relationships, its economic ironies–and speak a word that is truly good news, not just old, or nice, or irrelevant news, to the particular darkness that community faces. When pain is publicly acknowledged, respectfully shared, it loses some of its power to shame. There is freedom to tell one’s story.
An effective way to bring a community’s pain to expression is through a public forum. In
analyzing the way in which public consensus develops around certain issues, Michael Walzer
notes that initially people are willing to gather on the basis of very broad (what he calls “thin”)
principles–like some of those expressed earlier in the vision statements: “improvement in the
quality of life,” and so on. Human society, however, does not live and is not changed at the level
of such principles. As he notes, societies are particular. They are made of particular members
each with unique memories of their own and the communal life. Humanity in general, however,
has no such memories, no rituals, no shared understandings about what is good. Social critique
therefore, according to Walzer, naturally begins not with discussion of universal principles, but
with particular stories. It is “homegrown.” Each one’s distinctive reality is “thickly”described in
its colourful concreteness.
In those stories it becomes apparent that different definitions of the problem are, as
Hutchinson puts it, “rooted in different experiences, different responsibilities and different
loyalties.”
It may happen, however, that the participants discover an area in which their
perspectives converge–an “overlapping consensus”out of which common action may later take
shape.
In a couple of the communities in which I interviewed, clergy worked together to prepare a public telling of stories from various perspectives in the community. A farmer who had gone bankrupt (and was now living outside the community or perhaps in town), a farmer who was expanding, a lender, a pastor, a health care worker, a town business person, a parent were invited to tell their stories. They described the effect that the current agricultural climate was having on themselves, their families and their clients. Their stories gave others permission to speak. Divided communities became more clearly aware that they share a common future–that the loss of farm families closes down town businesses too, that schools, hospitals and curling rinks do not last long either. It becomes clearer that if only the “successful” have a right to stay in the community, then the reward for success will be a lonely life without neighbors or human services.
Identify Underlying Values and Beliefs
Woven through the stories that were shared with me I heard two very different accounts of what it means to be fully human. On the one hand I heard rural folks talking about the importance of community in terms like those of the vision articulated at the beginning of this article. They said that neighbors help each other when there is a fire or an illness. When a farmer expands his or her own operation by buying up a bankrupt neighbor’s land and equipment they deplore it as “cannibalism.” They told me how much they value the respect of their community and how ashamed they feel when they think that respect has been lost. They spoke of the pain of watching their common life dismantled by the loss of schools, churches, stores and other local institutions. They work hard to help their children to take over the farm, or at least stay in the community, even mortgaging their own futures to make that possible. And when they are forced to leave, by insolvency or for some other reason, they said it feels as though they are “cutting off an arm”–leaving part of themselves behind.
On the other hand, many justified the loss of smaller farms and general depopulation as an inevitable transition to a modern agricultural economy. They said “you have to keep growing, or you’ll start dying.” “Farming is a business,” they insist, “and it’s a business in which size matters.” Growth is regarded as a personal affair however. They spoke of farming as highly competitive. They said they enjoy the independence and personal freedom it offers. They insisted that their children manage without substantial help from parents. There was a tendency to treat farm losses phlegmatically–“it’s a winnowing; only the strong survive in this business.” If aggressive expansion turned out to be ill-timed, and they lost the farm, they were not completely devastated, believing that there were other opportunities in the city.
A number of researchers have noticed these two clusters of values; most attribute them to
the influence of ethnicity. Sonya Salamon’s field studies have been particularly important in this
regard.
She found that farmers of German or western European peasant backgrounds seemed to
place a high value on community and on farming as a way of life. They were more concerned with
continuity and traditions than rapid “progress.” They valued hard work as a more reliable road to
success than innovation and technology. Farmers of British background, a large number of whom
emigrated as a result of the rapid urban population growth brought on by industrialization in the
1800's and early 1900's, saw farming as a chance to grasp true independence. They were looking
for freedom from urban bureaucracy, deadening class restrictions and government interference.
They saw the “frontier” as a place where a person’s strength, intelligence and virtue would
determine their fate.
Salamon is able to identify particular North Dakota communities in which one or other of these two clusters of values–often referred to in the literature as “yeoman” and “entrepreneur” (or “yankee”) respectively–are dominant. Something similar appears to have developed on the Canadian prairies. Settlement tended to take place either in a somewhat individualistic, haphazard fashion, predominantly by pioneers of British descent, or in tightly-connected ethnic communities, particularly of German (especially Mennonite), Ukranian and French settlers. The continuing impact of the two groups is suggested by the fact that today, in Saskatchewan for example, 53.7% of the population, according to the 1996 Census, claims one of these latter three as one of their ethnic origins and 45% claim English or Scottish. However they are no longer as neatly divided into communities as they once were. Yeomen and entrepreneurs are found sitting together in church pews, neighbors in the fields, brothers and sisters in the same family. In fact, I discovered that both sets of values (even though conflicting) were often held by the same individual in regard to different elements of his or her life.
Overall, it is entrepreneurial values and perspectives (more urban than rural in both origin and character) which seem to have shaped Canada’s agricultural economy in the last thirty years. Mechanization has made it possible to milk, feed, plant, weed and harvest without help from one’s neighbor. The co-ops of the twenties and thirties have been replaced by large agribusinesses owned by uninvolved shareholders and often even larger umbrella corporations. In many places competition has taken on a savage face.
However yeoman values persist and interact with the others–although not always in ways
that are helpful. In other writing I talk about the experience of shame that many farmers go
through when their farm becomes insolvent.
The shame is a yeoman trait–present in most
cohesive agrarian societies around the world–in which one’s “self” is experienced as a construct
of community opinion. Those who lose the community’s respect–that is their personal
“honour”–experience it as a diminishment of self; they are shamed. They tend to withdraw from
and be isolated by the community. For the most part their perspective on the community’s
strengths and weaknesses and their voice in any conversation about its future, is lost.
The criteria for losing honour in modern Canada, however, are increasingly tied to the
entrepreneurial values of land accumulation, profit and visible prosperity, rather than responsible
community participation or careful stewardship of one’s land and heritage.
Dorothy said
“driving around the country you notice that some people have machinery too big for their
operations. It’s because status is determined by who can boast about the biggest machinery.”
The interaction of these values seems to be establishing a kind of Nietzchean capitalism in rural Canada. Progress, growth, expansion are seen as the keys to successful farming. But the pursuit of them is highly individualized; each competes to be the über-farmer. Cooperative enterprise has become increasingly difficult, not only because entrepreneurial values (with their urban roots) tend to regard it less positively, but because the yeoman values which should support it interfere through the imposition of shame. Farmers struggling to make a profit in a highly competitive market are unable to open their books to each other (a prerequisite for cooperative work) because they are afraid that they will lose face–that their bottom line will not show up as well as the neighbor’s.
The belief system in which these values are embedded might be called “survival of the fittest.” The underlying entrepreneurial perspective insists that only the fittest can survive; its yeoman overlay adds that only the fittest should (deserve to) survive.
I heard this philosophy expressed by farmers–solvent and insolvent, lenders, input dealers, even pastors. In various ways they said or implied that no matter how bad the weather, the markets, government agricultural policy, credit lending instruments or other extra-personal influences, a farm’s success is due to the fitness, especially the character and skills, of its operator. For example, at the beginning of the 1998 crash in commodity prices, the Royal Bank sent this assurance:
By all indications today is a time of tremendous opportunity for business-minded
farmers who can position themselves in a dynamic, global marketplace . . . . For
some it can be an intimidating time. But for farmers who are on top of their game,
the next 10 to 20 years will be exciting, challenging and potentially very rewarding
[emphasis mine].
Marvin observed that in his community it was assumed that farmers who went bankrupt were not on top of their game, personally or professionally: “One group says he deserved it or whatever. He bought too many lottery tickets or he drinks too much, or he had too many cigarettes.” Bill added, “Some people in the farm community want to stand back and say, ‘He must have been a bad manager; he made his mistakes. The sooner he’s out of the business, the quicker I’ll be able to sell what I sell for more money and more profit.’”
The character of “fit” farmers was described to me in language reminiscent of that used by
used by the writers of British imperial adventure fiction in the late 19th century to describe
“frontiersmen”. Authors such as Connor, Henty and Butler wrote stirring accounts of life on the
“margins of the empire” in a vast unspoiled land where independent free-thinkers could shape
their own destinies. The Canadian frontier, according to popular writer Robert Ballantyne (a
Hudson Bay fur trade clerk) offered unparalleled conditions for the pursuit of one’s fortune.
Courage, skill, independence and hard work were all that were required to be successful.
Clifford Sifton, Laurier’s minister of the interior and Canada’s agricultural architect at the
turn of the century, built on the image by selling Canada as a place where one could fail only if
one was unfit. It was his job to promote the Canadian west to potential immigrants. He plastered
Europe with posters that showed new farmers expanding their holdings rapidly to become owners
of large plantations in a few years. Others displayed trees growing on the prairies sporting fruit
the size of watermelons.
The west, he convinced them, is a fertile utopia where only the foolish
and feeble could fail to make a fortune.
The reality of course, was somewhat different. The immigrants discovered that early
frosts and long Canadian winters made farming here a tough and uncertain business. Thousands
went south to warmer climes.
According to James Woodsworth, one of our church leaders, this
simply made the winnowing process more stringent. The hardships, he claimed, were “relieving
Canada of the Negro problem and keeping out the lazy and improvident white.”
My interviewees told me that success on the farm requires not only the right kind of
character but enough capital to achieve “economies of scale.” Larger farms are thought to be
more efficient and therefore more profitable. This assumption too appears to have deep roots.
Gerald Friesen notes that when the West was being opened to settlement the government gave a
free quarter section to settlers who could “prove up,” but made sure it was adjacent to sale land
that they could buy when they completed their residency. This made it unlikely that a large
number of small farms would develop in an area and gave the edge to farmers with capital. The
government also gave huge tracts of land to the railway, which then resold it to settlers. Normally
it was those with capital wanting to amass larger holdings that could take advantage of such
sales.
Canada’s commitment to increasing the size and productivity of its farms was given a
boost by the starvation that followed the two world wars. Farmers felt called to feed the world.
A “breadbasket” motif appeared not only in my interviews but also showed up again and again in
government policy documents (“the prairies are the world’s breadbasket”) and lenders’
promotional material (“it’s Canada’s job to feed the world”).
The answer to greater food
production was found in the adoption of new technologies. The tractor, the truck and the
combine gained wide acceptance in the 20's. But they significantly altered the farm economy. By
increasing the farmers’ need for capital, they gave a distinct advantage to farmers who brought
significant wealth into the enterprise.
The machinery also gave farmers the independence that
the frontier images had promised them. By multiplying the acreage that could be handled by a
farm household, it allowed them to manage at seed-time and harvest without their neighbors and
undercut the need for hired hands. Thus subsistence farmers, who depended on wage labour to
supplement their incomes (up to seventy-five percent of the agricultural labour force in Alberta as
late as 1936) were deprived of an essential source of income and had to leave their farms.
After WWII the federal government provided large loans for “mechanization” and
“modernization.” The effect has been a tripling of the number of tractors per farm between 1961
and 1996, a doubling of the number of trucks and similar growth in the numbers of swathers and
combines.
Again, these moves clearly benefitted larger farms and farmers with extra capital.
The net effect has been a rapid shrinking of rural communities.
It was not necessary that this be so. Presumably, technologies could have been developed to make farming more intensive, rather than extensive–more efficient on small plots of land rather than huge plantations. But that did not fit with the vision held by Canada’s political architects.
The 1969 Federal Task Force on Agriculture report gave rather bald expression to the
conviction that the farming community would be healthier if the chaff was winnowed out and the
remaining farms increased in size. The report was prepared for the purpose of informing
government policy for the following decades. In their research the task force met with a variety
of politicians, agricultural experts and farmers. Out of those interviews they concluded that two-thirds of Canadian farms are essentially “non-viable” because their operators have not “kept up”;
they have exercised poor management. It refers to them as a “social problem” (though it adds “It
would be improper to criticize such people as perverse”). It goes on to say these farmers have
been made “marginal” and “sub-marginal” by technological developments that “changed the
requirements to be a successful farmer.” They “could not change as fast in their attitudes and
capacities as did the economic and technological environment surrounding (and partially
submerging) them.” According to the report, these unfit farmers can be distinguished from the
“farming elite of large-scale business-oriented, technically-experienced operators” by their lower
levels of education and experience. They show evidence of “lack of ability, lack of initiative or an
uncooperative spirit.” (In other words they are stupid, lazy or stubborn.)
These two-thirds of farmers live in or close to poverty, the report says because
overpopulation has divided the agricultural pie into too many slices. In the end, it concludes
“The most attractive answer to the problem of low incomes in agriculture is that labour move to
employment in other industries”–in other words that these farmers get out of farming. The results
would be better for all: “Increased mobility out of farming helps to achieve a higher per capita net
farm income for those left in farming while at the same time obtaining better paid employment for
those who leave agriculture.” Too often, it cautions, solutions to this “small farm problem,” have
been hampered by agricultural leaders who were “loathe to recognize the need for a widespread
exodus from farming.” The only real solution it insists is to develop “much more effective policies
to take men out of farming.”
Federal support for farms that were larger and/or better managed ( usually assumed to be
synonymous) is reflected in its subsidy programs. The Federal Standing Committee on
Agriculture notes that the government’s subsidy programs have often been “untargeted”–meaning
that they distributed cash payments to farmers according to acreage or gross income, rather than
need.
This means that the lion’s share of government support has tended to go to a few large or
wealthy farms, helping them to become larger or wealthier. The Special Canadian Grains
Program, for example, paid out at a fixed price per acre for each crop. The result was that in
1985, of the money spent by the Canadian government, $1.1 billion went to high income farmers
(an average of $15,429 per farmer), $386 million to middle income farmers (average $5311) and
only $150 million to low income farmers (average $1029) who in many cases may have needed it
the most.
More recently, federal programs have become targeted. However they do not target
farmers who need the most support. Rather there is a tendency to try to reward “good managers”
and withdraw support from the bad. For example, this appears to have been what motivated the
Saskatchewan government to cancel GRIP 91–a revenue insurance plan to which farmers and
government contributed. Farmers took the government to court for breaking the contract.
In
its defense, the government told the court that it cancelled the contract because it was concerned
about “moral hazard”: it felt that the program would not adequately distinguish between good and
bad farmers. The government was worried that many would use it as a form of welfare and lapse
into poor farming practices–using cheaper fertilizers, putting marginal lands into production, even
lying about their historic yields. This would run up the cost of pay-outs, putting the
government’s budget in the red.
In fact, when all the figures came in, it turned out that in spite of the temptation, farmers did nothing of the sort. They continued to farm as responsibly as they had been. In his decision Judge Laing noted that there had not been actual evidence of mismanagement, that any costs from misuse of the plan had already been built into the premium structure and that there were monitoring provisions in the program to protect against misuse. Nonetheless, the concern that some of the “unfit” might be supported by the program was enough for the government to act precipitously to break the contract.
The present Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance (AIDA) program shows evidence of
having been formed out the same “survival of the fittest” philosophy. In its 1999 formulation
those farmers eligible for the most money were those had done well for three years in a row and
had suffered only in the most recent year. Those who needed the support the most, who had had
several difficult years (often because of drought or floods), received the least because they were
viewed as liabilities. Advertisements for AIDA on the radio encouraged farmers to apply, but
only if they were experiencing serious financial problems “for which they are not responsible.”
The difficulty in sorting out uncontrollable factors from management skills led to the development
of an application form that was so complicated that, on average, it cost $600 to $700 in
accountant fees to complete it.
Federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief made it plain in an interview with the Winnipeg
Free Press in November, 1999. Responding to criticism of the government’s refusal to reinstate
historic grain sector supports (removed in 1995) he said the government position was a form of
“tough love.” A larger aid program would send the wrong signal to profitable operations. “I’ve
had [successful] farmers say to me very clearly, and these are not my words, ‘Don’t you dare bail
those bastards out.’”
In other words, the loss of support helps to force people out of farming
who really do not belong there because they cannot adapt.
This belief that only the fittest can survive is reinforced by the moral conviction that only the fittest should survive. Christian churches seem to play a key role here. Those whom I interviewed seemed to believe (or perceived their congregation to believe) that prosperity was a sign of God’s favor–that is of their spiritual fitness. One might call it “the survival of the righteous.” Dorothy said that in her community the buying of bigger and better machinery is “a competition to show who has been most blessed by God.” Farmers modestly say, when people comment on the success of their business, “well, we’ve been blessed.” For those who lose their farms, however, the implication is that the blessing has been withdrawn. For some reason–usually assumed to be a defect of character or skill–they have been cursed. During her bankruptcy Nora said, “I feel like I’ve been cut adrift from God.”
Randy’s experience of the church as he lost his farm was ambivalent. On the one hand the minister preached about God’s love, and sometimes he really needed to hear that. On the other hand he heard a great deal of judgement in church-goer’s comments about farmers in difficulty. In the end, he decided “There are some fine people in the churches,” but “if you’re having financial difficulties, stay the hell out of them, cause you’re not going to get a second worth of sympathy or a pinch of help from them.” Interviewees often told of insolvent farmers dropping out of church, and of getting little or no support from pastors or other church members.
Rural sociologists William and Judith Heffernan reported the same from their study of
American farm families in the mid-eighties.
United Methodist leaders in the U.S. found that
efforts to train rural pastors in dealing with the farm crisis met with a good deal of apathy and
resistance on the ministers’ part. They report that pastors lacked understanding about the crisis,
denied the existence of the crisis, responded inappropriately, withdrew from families in financial
trouble or expected that families in trouble would come to them, and often never showed up when
farmers were being sold out.
Although there are many reasons for the inability of many rural churches to respond to
farmers in distress
there is an unavoidable element of judgement. If others are managing under
the same weather and market conditions, then this one who failed must be foolish, lazy, or a
spendthrift. By failing to pay their debts they put local businesses at risk. They are the “prodigal
sons” or daughters who have squandered the family inheritance through “loose living” and no
longer deserve to be called children. They are the “unrighteous leaven” contaminating the lump;
the goats that must be separated from the sheep.
Assess Truth-Bearing Capacity
The third step is to begin to examine the veracity of this belief system–is it true that only the fittest do and should survive? Exploration of these questions can take place in a variety of rural contexts–in private conversations, at the coffee shop, in community workshops, in congregational discussion groups, in special interest groups. In such places clergy might want to raise several questions that probe the assumptions behind “survival of the fittest” thinking in agriculture. The first set has to do with concrete truthfulness, congruence with the facts:
1. Who are the “fit”? What are the definitions of farming fitness that are used to judge “farmers of the year” in this area? Are there respected farmers using very different approaches to farming (that is, is there more than one way of being fit)?
a. How does size relate to fitness? Is it necessary for survival? Look for example at the
structure of the food system. What would one conclude from the facts presented in the National
Farmers Union (NFU) presentation to the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture (Feb 17,
2000)? In that presentation they note that modern food production takes place in a chain. On
the input side are oil, fertilizer, seed, chemical, and machinery companies. On the output side are
grain companies, railways, packers, processors, retailers, and restaurants. On both sides every
link in the chain, nearly every sector, is dominated by a small number of (between two and ten)
multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations.
In the middle of the chain are Canada’s 270,000
still comparatively small farms. Of all the links in that food chain, they are the least profitable.
Gross revenues from one company alone–Cargill–was $75 billion in 1998, compared to total
Canadian gross farm revenues of $29 billion. Perhaps the best measure of profitability is the
return one gets on what one has invested, that is, net income (or profit) divided by one’s equity
(i.e. one’s assets minus one’s debts). Farmers earned just 0.3% return on their equity in 1998,
while agribusinesses earned 5% to over 200% returns on theirs. Returns of even 3% would make
farming viable according to the NFU. They suggest that there is no shortage of money in the
agri-food system; it is simply that the large and powerful players are able to grab and keep more
than their proportionate share. Their conclusion is that “one would immediately have doubts that
extremely numerous and relatively tiny family farms could extract fair and adequate revenues and
profits from a chain dominated by firms a thousand to a million times larger.” Do you agree? Is it
possible for farmers acting cooperatively to exercise enough power to maintain a profitable place
in the food chain? If so, how is that cooperation to be achieved?
b. How does efficiency relate to fitness? There have been dramatic changes in farm
efficiency over the last century. According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 1890 40-50
labor-hours were required to produce 100 bushels of wheat (on 5 acres) with gang plow, seeder,
harrow, binder, thresher, wagons, and horses. By the 1980's only 3 labor-hours were required to
produce 100 bushels of wheat (on 3 acres) with tractor, 35-foot sweep disk, 30-foot drill,
25-foot self-propelled combine, and trucks. This huge increase in labor-cost efficiency has been
almost offset however by greatly increased capital costs for machinery. With prices for wheat at
the beginning of the 21st century near what they were one hundred years earlier, a highly
mechanized wheat farm must be extremely productive if it is to generate enough profit to support
a family.
Are such farmers more “fit” than those who choose to reduce the costs of their inputs
by using smaller or older machinery, by sharing machinery and investing a greater amount of their
own labor on a smaller piece of land, or by investing with others in the processing of their raw
product so that they receive retail, not just commodity, prices? What is most sustainable in the
long run?
c. How do size and efficiency relate to each other? In view of the above, does “economy
of scale” really mean that all larger entities are more efficient and more effective–or does it mean,
as Ursula Franklin suggests, that there is an economy (a set of technologies and trade patterns)
that is appropriate to the size of a particular enterprise?
Marty Strange, in his survey of U.S.
farm efficiency studies found that peak efficiency (lowest cost of production per unit) is possible
on most types of farms when one or two people are kept fully employed making full use of the
best technology. He concludes that
half of [American] food comes from farms that are larger than they need to be to
be fully efficient. From the point of view of the public, then, American agriculture
must be considered big enough. There is really little public purpose in encouraging
further farm-size expansion.
d. How does fitness relate to sustainability? Is a farmer regarded as fit if he or she
maintains efficiency by off-loading costs onto others? If the land can only support his or her
practices for forty or fifty years before becoming exhausted, then the land, and the next generation
bear the costs. Are there costs for large confined-animal operations that are not borne by the
owners? Who, for example, bears the costs of air and ground-water polluted by manure? Are
some surviving because they are able to escape carrying their share of social and economic
responsibilities? Ursula Franklin suggests that a community needs to keep three sets of books: one
is the customary dollars-and-cents leger (with a column for money saved); second is a catalogue
of the social impacts, human and community gains and losses; the third is the accounting of gains
and losses in both the natural and artificial environment.
2. Who is actually surviving and why? Even if one assumes that a good percentage of those who lose their farms are not the best managers, how does one account for the bankruptcy of those who are regarded as very “fit” by their communities? I interviewed several who received “farmer of the year” honours from their communities–sometimes more than once–who went bankrupt. Were the community’s standards of “fit” inappropriate? Had they mis-evaluated this farmer’s adherence to those standards? Or was that farmer overwhelmed by external forces he or she could not fully control?
3. Is the playing field level–that is, is the competition fair? Do the fittest actually have
a chance to survive or is the likelihood of survival tilted towards certain players apart from their
managerial or productive ability? In this regard one might want to ask about differential
subsidies. How do the tariffs and price-controls applied to protect dairy and eggs and the
removal of the transportation subsidies for grains affect the survivability of farmers in those
sectors? How do heavy European and American subsidies affect the ability of Canadian farmers
in those sectors to survive? Lending patterns are also significant. During the eighties lenders
required that debtors sign secrecy agreements when they settled an unrepayable debt. Were those
who were unable to get their debt reduced disadvantaged? During that period, some large lenders
illegally charged escalating interest on fixed rate loans.
If a farm was pushed into insolvency as
a result, was that a sign of poor management on the farmer’s part?
The second element that must be debated to determine the veracity of a survival of the fittest philosophy addresses the capacity of this belief system to carry the hopes and values of a people. Two key questions come to mind:
1. What kind of “survival” are we striving for? To begin one might ask participants how
rural life has changed, especially for those who have been in the community a long time. What
aspects of their lives have been enhanced? What has been lost? How do they measure their
standard of living? In monetary terms? What about good access to schools, churches, health
care, recreation? If the latter are included can survival really be regarded as an individual
achievement or does it require a community? Participants may find this obvious, but it might be
noted that studies in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand document a strong
correlation between increased farm size and decline in the quality of community life. They show
that there is: a decreased sense of a shared interest in farming and an increase in competitive
factions among farmers;
the withdrawal by both men and women from community participation
into farm work or private consumption;
the loss of local leadership;
the loss of educational,
health and social services, together with a decline in community self-determination.
Are such
effects being felt in this community? If so, how much do they matter? What kind of future for
rural Canada can honestly be imagined if survival is imagined only in terms of individual farm
growth? The research suggests that we could be left with a few lonely “wheat kings” dominating
rural Canada. A handful of massive, muscled survivors of an agrarian wrestling tournament,
having thrown their neighbors out of the ring, will rule an empty landscape. This is not the future
that rural Canadians hope for if the federal survey and community round table discussions
mentioned earlier are representative. Nonetheless it seems likely to be the future that the values
they embrace in agricultural practice and social habit will usher in if nothing changes. Recognizing
this disparity may help to bring a divided rural community to the point of really committed
conversation.
2. What sort of people do we want to keep in the community–that is, who should
survive? One might ask “Remember someone who has left the community. What did we lose
when they left? What gifts–other than economic--did they bring to us? Is our community better
off now that they are gone?” As a philosophy, the “survival of the fittest” seems to aim directly
at the heart of the concept that every human being deserves respect. It assumes that treating
people as if all were of equal value has a destructive effect on society and culture. It inhibits the
rise of superior human beings to their proper status in society and exalts those with very little to
contribute. To treat all with respect may doom humanity, at best to mediocrity, at worst to
extinction.
The question for the community is then, “Do you believe that the survival of rural
Canada is dependent on culling out those who are not successful farmers? Are those who have
less economic power worth less than the powerful?” Perhaps the most basic question (and one
that leads into the next section) is theological: “Is our future in the hands of the brightest and best
human beings, or is it in the hands of God? Are we on our own, or is there One who holds our
future?”
Nurture a Rebellious Imagination
This brings us to the fourth task in helping a community deal with the belief system that supports its economic structures. Once the stories of suffering have been told, and the “truth-telling” strengths of the belief structure have been tested, the final task is to develop a “habitable” worldview for this community.
This can be the most difficult of the four, for several reasons. First, according to the 1998 National Rural Dialogue rural dwellers feel that their “‘close-knit’ community can also be a ‘closed-in’ community.” Because there is shame attached to failure, new and potentially disastrous ideas are not always welcomed.
Secondly, also because of the shame, those who are most aware of the inadequacy of the present worldview–those who have invested heavily in it and failed–are isolated, their voices muted in the community’s conversation.
Thirdly, discourse about alternative belief systems may be difficult because many community members are not part of organizations such as churches which teach their members how to articulate and assess the beliefs that inform their behavior and values. Others who are adherents to such groups may be tempted to use their convictions in a way that shuts down debate. In fact, church members and leaders have often done just that.
On the one hand that dark side of the Church’s history cannot simply be set aside. It takes
skillful leadership to keep conversations from moving to close off alternatives. On the other hand,
the Bible does offer a potent resource for re-imagining reality. In Prophets, Pastors and Public
Choices, Hutchinson suggests that our Christian tradition serves us most effectively when we use
it as “scaffolding” within which one might construct creative new options for human life.
In my
experience the Bible can be used in this way even with groups that include non-believers.
Participants are invited, for the space of the conversation, to enter a story that differs from the
one that our society tells, one in which humans are not on their own. They have the opportunity
to view their lives from inside its framework (or as Lindbeck would say, to inscribe their own
world into the biblical world.
) The intent is not to develop a biblical ethic of farm economics that
is good for all times. The Bible does not offer simple “answers” about social issues; rather it
provides a broad vision of human life under God which re-orients us and suggests that the status
quo may not be adequate. That vision challenges us to find new ways of organizing our common
life. Hutchinson observed the effect of biblical scaffolding in the context of Project North:
[T]he use of the Bible evoked a common memory that God cares for the oppressed
and for the resources of the earth. Project North was tapping the disclosive power
of biblical stories and symbols to generate an openness to new possibilities and to
call into question existing assumptions and priorities. These appeals created a
moral ethos in which only barbarians would refuse to care about justice for natives
and stewardship of non-renewable resources.
This process of biblical re-framing has two elements: People who represent very different perspectives are willing to gather for conversation about the biblical world because they agree on certain “thin” biblical principles–of the “love your neighbor,” “care for the suffering” sort. (We earlier noted the same thing regarding conversations about the modern rural economy.) These provide a level of comfort and help to bind the group to a sense of common purpose and conviction. However they operate at a very general level. The actual entry into the biblical world (as into the modern context) takes place through its “facts,” its concrete details. The exploration moves inductively from detail to larger picture. Participants immerse themselves in the thickly woven colors and movements of the Bible, including its social context. In the process they begin to discern its heart, its plot, and the intentions of its Principal Player. At the same time connections between the two worlds (the ancient and one’s own) become apparent. Participants are invited to ask themselves “If this is what God is up to–then how does our behaviour in the farm crisis, how do our survival of the fittest values, fit in? Do they further God’s story or take us on a detour? Are they in tune with the basic character and intentions of the One who is moving the narrative forward?” In the process some assumptions about what is “good” or “inevitable” may be challenged.
Used in this way, the Bible opens up alternatives. It nurtures a rebellious imagination, revealing the present economic and social arrangements not as unavoidable or God-given but as a human construct–one that can be re-constructed. Allow me to close with an example of how one might explore “survival of the fittest” thinking within a biblical scaffold.
Clergy can help their congregations access the biblical imagination by showing them that
Israel’s prophets spoke to an agrarian context that, while obviously different in many ways, has
important similarities to their own. For example, biblical scholars have noted that as in other
agrarian societies, honour and shame are core features of social interaction.
Land had become a
focus for social power and destructive competition,
the accumulation of debt had become a
major factor in the destruction of Israel’s rural life,
and, to encourage lending, legislation had
been enacted that circumvented borrower’s rights.
The concentration of land is of particular concern to the biblical writers. The last of the
ten commandments tells us not to covet our neighbor’s house. According to scholar Marvin
Chaney, the Hebrew word translated “house” (תיב) here refers to a family’s primary unit of
production—and includes one’s fields, cattle and residence.
In 1 Kings 21, the prophet Elijah
calls down God’s wrath on King Ahab’s desire to gather the best land for himself. Though
already a very large landowner, Ahab covets the choice little vineyard that belongs to Naboth. He
schemes to get it, killing Naboth in the process. Elijah pronounces judgement on the powerful
who cannibalize their neighbors.
Similarly Micah condemns those who “covet fields, and seize them, houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance” (Mic 2:2). He warns that the land will be re-divided, with the coveters excluded, not even able to attend the meeting in which it is re-parceled out (Mic 2:4).
The prophet Isaiah perhaps says it most plainly, in words that are eerily modern. He pronounces judgement on the vision of a depopulated, and corporately-run rural community: “Alas, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!” (Isa 5:8).
Yahweh’s vision for human community is much different. Israel clearly recognized that land is our lifeline—it is the source of our food and sustenance. Israel’s story begins with humankind (adam) being formed out of soil (adamah). That connection persists in modern English in terms such as “human” and “humus,” “earth” and “earthling.” In the biblical view, being connected to the land is an essential part of being human.
As such the land is given to all, not just to the wealthiest, the smartest, the greediest or the most powerful. God recognizes our need for a place–to grow food and to grow families, to grow communities and to put down roots—a place to call home. God graciously provides the land–not as our right, however, but as a gift of love. It is not given because of one’s noble birth, good management skills or moral uprightness. In the biblical view one does not have to earn land or deserve it; one does not have to be wise or strong enough to defend it. This gift of social security is rooted, according to the Torah, not in intrinsic human worth, but in the sovereign ownership of God: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants” (Lev 25:23).
God owns the land and graciously chooses to let us use it–to bring about God’s vision for human life. The Bible gives no indication that it includes lonely corporate farms, exhausted families working on-farm and off, demoralized churches and vacant schools. Rather, it imagines healthy, vibrant communities. That’s why the Bible talks about Jubilee. According to Leviticus 25, every fifty years debts on the land were to be forgiven and the land redistributed so that the dispossessed would have a place, a piece of turf, in the community. There does not seem to be evidence that Israel was successful in carrying out the Jubilee, at least on a regular basis, perhaps for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, it makes clear God’s intention: that the land is to be populated and shared, not concentrated into the hands of a few.
Discussion about these matters could go in several directions. One might ask about our relationship to the land. Is it important for Canada to have significant numbers of people on the land to remind ourselves that we are made of dust and shall return to dust? Is there a danger that if that is forgotten, we may believe that we are gods, free to loot the earth as if it belonged to us? If only large corporations farm the land, who will be responsible for its care? On a family farm, those who own the land work it and they know that they alone are responsible for its care. But with corporations the buck never stops. It gets passed from the workers, to the managers, to the CEO, to the board of directors, and finally out to the shareholders who are such a diverse, unconcerned group that they cannot exercise any real responsibility. Is it possible that significant portions of Canada’s rich land will be “farmed out” under that kind of corporate management? How does personal ownership relate to responsible stewardship–particularly in view of the fact that God ultimately owns the land? How does ownership relate to justice? On the one hand land titles and other legal instruments protect the modern Naboths from expropriation. On the other hand such titles become security for debts and are easily lost to creditors.
It is worth asking whether there are benefits to landlessness. Can one be over-dependent on the land? Israel’s prophets insist that even land is not Israel’s ultimate security–Yahweh is. So Israel’s training as a nation included forty years of landlessness. As the prophet reminds them,
He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD (Dt 8:3).
Gathering food each morning that they did not grow, food that perished in a day and could not be accumulated or traded, Israel learned that for both high-born and low, it is ultimately Yahweh, not land, who is the source of life. Several centuries later, when trust in Yahweh hits an all-time low in Israel, the land is taken away again. The purpose of that loss, according to the prophets, is that they might get back in touch with the Land-Owner.
What does this mean for modern farmers? When they lose their land is it an opportunity to depend more deeply on God? Or is it God’s judgment on a farmer who has become over-dependent on the land? There is a significant difference between the two; who is qualified to decide which it might be (if either)?
In my interviews some of the farmers who had left their land reported that the experience, though deeply painful, had some liberating qualities to it as well. They realized that they could live without being on their land–that God was in the city too. Many who were still on the farm, however, and in danger of losing it, expressed deep fears about life off the farm. Leaders could explore some of these fears. They might ask about the affect that these fears have on farm management practices, on decisions regarding how to deal with farm debt, on the family’s emotional and spiritual well-being and so on.
Recognizing the land’s penultimate (not ultimate) value to human community, the leader might also ask how a community protects opportunities for many to be on the land while helping those who leave the land to do so with dignity.
The question of debt and Jubilee could be explored. From whom is the land to be taken if it is going to be given to the landless? Who loses money when debts are not paid? Is credit dehumanizing or is it a means by which the community temporarily shares its resources with a person so that they can get underway in business? One might suggest that in a sense, jubilees are inevitable. When land and power are concentrated into too few hands, economies become locked, frozen. When debt accumulates in an economy beyond the debtors ability to repay, some form of jubilee becomes essential. In the 80's billions in farm debt were written off because the farms were no longer worth what was owed on them. However, that remission of debt was done in a way that was bitter and shame-ridden. Farmers were forced to sign secrecy agreements preventing them from helping each other in their relation to powerful lenders. They were left feeling that the entire responsibility for the debt rested on their shoulders alone. One could ask how debt remission (and avoidance of debt in the first place) might be incorporated more effectively into the structure of agriculture. Assuming that sinful humans will tend to mess up the economic structures they create, how does one effectively institutionalize jubilee so that communities can be repopulated, so that families can begin again?
Another option would be to explore ways in which land in rural communities have become a focus for competition and the exercise of power. To what extent are such practices due to the valuing of land as a “right” and “personal possession” rather than a gift? Some farmers spoke to me of being “cannibalized” by their neighbours. Is this a common image? What does the use of that term say about those who use it in terms of their relationship to the land? When one feels pressure to constantly expand one’s operation, what attitude toward the land does that reflect? What role do corporate farms and lenders play in the concentration of land in the hands of a few? Is this ultimately healthy for the community (keeping the industry viable) or unhealthy (dispossessing many from the land)?
Israel’s prophets lay the foundation of the biblical framework for a discussion of the
survival of the fittest. Jesus builds on it as he introduces the theme of his ministry in Luke 4 as
that of Jubilee–freeing the imprisoned (who were mostly debtors in his day).
Is he renewing the
vision of the prophets before him that no family should be without land and the honour and
security in the community that come with it? Or is he stretching the understanding of Jubilee to
include the honouring now of a growing population of the landless (of which he is a member!)
Jesus refuses to assign worth on the basis of economic accomplishment or social status.
Instead (shamelessly in the view of his society) he opens his table indiscriminately to all.
He
does this, as his parable of the pharisee and the tax collector indicates, because he believes that
our worth is not determined by us or our accomplishments. That prerogative is God’s alone and
God assigns us all worth not because we deserve it, but because God is gracious. So at the pool
of Bethzatha (John 5), Jesus heals a man who is too weak to be first into the water when its
healing power was stirred up (first in would be healed). The fittest of the sick survive by making
it into the water before the others; but Jesus makes sure that the weakest survive also.
Paul follows in Jesus’ footsteps, writing in I Cor 12 that even the weaker members of the body have an essential place. No one is to be discarded. In fact, Paul regards weakness (including his own “thorn in the flesh”–2 Cor 12) as an essential reminder that we are not gods. It keeps us in mind of our limits, of our need for one another and our dependence on God. Most astonishingly, Paul dares to say if we focus our hopes on those who are most successful we may miss out on God: for “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. . . . For God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 2: 23, 27b-28). The glory of God and the glory of humanity come together, Christians believe, in the one who, according to conventional standards, is the “loser” of Nazareth–the crucified and risen Jesus.
In this sort of biblical framework, submerged rural values about interdependence and
mutual support are allowed to surface. A good example is the vision that Baldur Manitoba has
produced for their community; it is strong, broad and humane. Its members imagine Baldur as a
place where “historical, cultural, agricultural, natural and human resources are promoted as
valued assets and all facets of the population are encouraged to exercise their ownership of the
community through positive, active involvement as they are able.”
Is there hope that such
visions can be realized in the face of overwhelming global, national and local pressures working to
“weed out” and reduce our rural population? I see signs of hope in particular communities that
have successfully reversed the trend.
Often broad changes in consciousness occur as a result of
local experiments, small resistance that opens a community to new ideas and spreads to others.
Whatever the future holds for rural Canada, I would like to help it find confidence for its vitality
not in a winnowing of the weak but in the gracious sustaining power of God.
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Endnotes