George Naylor – squeezing the family farm

George was the keynote speaker at the benefit. A humble man who has worked his own family’s farm for decades – growing mostly soybeans and corn at a relatively small scale compared to the industrial farming operations surrounding him in Iowa – George has studied the history and politics of that have driven most families out of farming. He’s highly supportive of the idea of a rebirth of small farms and an influx of worthy farmers coming directly out of military service.

In this 3-minute video clip of his speech, George quotes Kenneth Bolding, an agro-economist who, in the 1960s, represented the thinkng about replacing family farms with corporate farming operations. Bolding compared this displacement of family farmers with squeezing toothpaste out of a tube – the thicker the toothpaste, the more pressure would be required. At the end of the quote was the proposition:

“If you can’t get people out of agriculture easily, you’re going to have to do farmers severe injustice in order to solve the problem of allocation.”