Do you know where your food comes from? With so many people moving off the farm and into urban areas it’s not surprising we’ve lost touch with our agriculture roots.

When farmers became capable of producing food beyond the needs of their own families, others in their society were freed to devote themselves to projects other than food acquisition. Historians and anthropologists have long argued that the development of agriculture made civilization possible. The total world population probably never exceeded 15 million inhabitants before the invention of agriculture. Now only about two percent of the population (farmers) are feeding the rest of the world. And many of those farmers are over the age of 50. What will happen when they die off? Who will step up and feed the world?

There IS a new generation of farmer. But where grandpa was solely a farmer and could make ends meet with what he earned, the new farmer has to be smarter and work harder usually at two different jobs. In our video blog this week, I travel to Fairview, OK to visit with a farming family to find out just what goes into a wheat harvest and how they are combining life on the farm with life in the office.

~Alisa Hines

On the Horizon: Plight of the Wheat Farmer from Alisa Hines on Vimeo.