What is the real value of a farm?
We live in a cult of measurement. As the world’s population expands and raw materials and fossil fuels dwindle, there is an increasing need to justify how we use our limited resources. Governments responsible for resource allocation have come to rely on the use of measurements of efficiency in their decision making, giving those with more readily measurable results a head start in the struggle for funding. Business and commerce produce the most measurable outcomes of all—goods, services and employment valued in monetary terms—and substantial resources are devoted to generating more and more of these. However, our leaders must also determine how value should be assigned to other human endeavours that we know are intrinsically worthwhile, but that cannot be easily quantified in monetary terms.
One way to do this is through stories that appeal to core human values. Collectively, we acknowledge that education, health care...
Sara F. Sarkar has conducted research in plant genetics and performance measures for non-profits, worked in sustainable agriculture and international development, volunteered in community urban farming and led public affairs discussions on food and agriculture.
Steven P. Chatfield researches regeneration in a variety of agricultural and agro-forestry crops at the University of Toronto. He has also worked in plant agriculture at the University of Guelph and at the International Agricultural Research Centre in the United Kingdom.
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