Farming in Gourmet?

Normally, Gourmet magazine does all of their articles on the latest place to eat, hot new dishes, and even hotter chefs. However, this past month’s edition features a four page article on why a Gourmet reader should be concerned about the Farm Bill. Betting the Farm: Washington has created a tangled web of subsidies that determines the way our food is grown, is the title of the article which compares growing food in rural Walworth County, SD with the five counties just north of NYC.

Both regions have about 450,000 acres of agricultural production, but Walworth supports only 322 farms today (there were 653 in 1920) compared to 2,500 farms in NY. Average size is 1,500 acres in SD compared to 175 acres in NY, but those smaller farms produce $152 million in production compared to $31 million in SD.

When Gourmet starts digging into the Farm Program and trying to figure out how food is produced, you can rest assured that it is quickly moving up on the radar for people who might not have known that milk really did come from a cow.