From Life to Death on the Farm

The farmer is a steward of death as much as he is of life

My previous essay considered the theme of life through death. I wanted to stay with this theme for another essay, this time considering how this dynamic plays out on the farm.

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Photo by Paz Arando on Unsplash

After life, follows death. Thus the invariable law of this world stands firm no matter how violently the transhumanist rages against it. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. This we know, and to an extent trust, no matter how vigorously we try to erase this truth from our collective consciousness. Death is an ultimate reality we all will have to wrestle with, come to terms with, and make our peace with - and none of us must reckon with death so much, perhaps, as the farmer.

Many professions are well acquainted with death: the undertaker, the doctor, the hospice worker. For all of these, death is a prominent feature in their job description, something they are paid to deal with on a near-constant basis. Death for them comes as a tide that forever rolls into the shore, its breakers hitting with a sombre constancy, demanding that its aftermath be dealt with. Although death may be familiar to them - indeed their jobs are founded upon its inevitability - it always retains its sting. There is one vocation, however, where death is not just an ever-present acquaintance, but is an end in and of itself. It may not be one we first think of when asked to list professions where death is a fundamental part - but farming is a vocation that is perhaps most intimately acquainted with death above almost all others¹, for the farmer must steward death as much as he does life. Before the crop or cow becomes food for our plates, it first must die.

Thankfully though for the farmer, death is not the whole of his story. Before the time to kill, there is a time for planting, breeding, nurturing, and growing. The farmer must be an expert at bringing forth abundant life. He must be a student of the seasons, intimately acquainted with the biology and ecology of his plants and the behaviour of his livestock, keenly aware of their needs, and always ready to satisfy them. He must do what is best for his crops and livestock, nurturing them with skilful, loving, and wise care. The skills, wisdom, and knowledge necessary for this he has received from the Good Stewards of the land that came before him and who produced the food that fuelled his early years. He must in turn pour his life and soul into the soil and the creatures he has inherited and been entrusted to steward. Only then will he earn the title of a ‘Good Farmer’.

But he does all this keenly aware that as well as being a steward of life, his ultimate purpose and his reason for working the soil and pouring his lifeblood into it, is the production of abundant good food. For him to achieve his calling, he must accept that his role as a farmer means being a steward of death as much as of life. He is the one who decides when death must come to his livestock or his crop. Their time on earth is in his hands. And this timing is everything. If impatience prevails and death is enacted too soon, the fruit remains sour, the wheat fails to ripen, and the lamb remains underdeveloped. If he is too reticent to carry out his sombre duty, or too late to start the harvest, the fruit rots on the tree, the wheat stalk lodges, and the lamb becomes tough. Death must come at the allotted time and must come from the hand of the one who nurtured the life that is now extinguished. The farmer cannot avoid death.

Thus, although the Good Farmer must be emotionally and professionally close to his flock, he must not get too close. For if he did he might be tempted to reengage on his duty, the duty to feed his community and nation. It is a complex duty; to make his living and to provide food for our plates, the farmer must kill those creatures he has nurtured and loved. An economic necessity it may be, but painful nonetheless. However, on a Good Farm, there will always be a few animals that remain as pets. These are the animals that through their unique behaviour, particular beauty, or dependence from birth endear themselves to the farmer in an irresistible way. These he allows and even delights to spare from the abattoir, even if it hurts his pocket just a bit. But these acts of clemency must be the exception and not the norm. The Good Farmer must be good and faithful at bringing about death - at the right time, at the right intensity, and in a humane way.

Even for the crop farmer, death is an ever-present acquaintance. He must kill some of those creatures who feast themselves upon the bounty of his fields, those creatures that we call ‘pests’². The Bad Farmer will liberally douse his fields in pesticides, annihilating pests and pollinators alike, thus spreading the spectre of ecocidal death throughout the food chain as Rachel Carson brought to our attention all those years ago. Conversely, the Good Farmer, if he must use these chemicals of death, will use them sparingly and wisely, or if he is an organic farmer - he will refrain from using them at all, instead relying on the wild species that thrive on his farm that will do the deed of predation for him. But never the less, the death of these pests must occur in some way shape or form in order for his fields to produce bountifully.

His crops must eventually die too. Perhaps this is something we forget or have never really considered. Plants may not be sentient, but they share with us that extraordinary property that is life, and therefore share the same end that we do. From winter to spring, the farmer encourages the growth of his plants, watching as the months flow by how the stalks of his corn lengthen and the fruit of his apples swell. Watering, fertilising, protecting - these are the verbs of springtime. But there will come a time late in the summer when the scythe is sharpened or the combine is brought out of its long hibernation. It is harvest time. A time for hard sweaty work. A time for rejoicing in the abundance the Lord has provided. A time for the fields to become empty again. A time for death. As one author has said, “There is a strange irony to the fact that our bountiful harvest is plucked from fields that are dying.”³

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Contrary to the shrieks of some of the more extreme animal rights activists, the Good Farmer is not in love with death. It may be a professional necessity for him, and something he has come to terms with, but it will always pain him. Yes, he must become desensitised to it to an extent, but the slaughter is always a gruesome and solemn affair - and he never loves the death of his animals. This is especially so when the plague of premature death visits his farm. Untimely death is viewed by the farmer as a horror - not just a harsh financial loss but (whether rightly or wrongly) as a failure of care and duty. Even if natural causes or uncontrollable events were to blame, the Good Farmer often cannot help but feel guilty, it is as if he has let this creature down and is somehow responsible for its death. The Good Farmer knows his animals by name (or at least by individual personality), therefore the death of an old faithful bull or friendly ewe is not too dissimilar to the death of a longtime personal friend, and the grief is palpable. To see a farmer cry over the ewe who dies in lambing or the cow who fell into a ditch is to witness a pouring forth of righteous emotion - the outworking of deep love and care.

The Bad Farmer does not care for death. It is simply collateral that comes with the job and a mere financial annoyance. The vast number of the animals under his authority on his intensive farm means he sees them not as individuals, but as mere economic units. He ‘cares’ for them only up to the extent needed for their survival (not their flourishing), which means any degree of care that falls short of this pitifully low standard will likely lead to premature death, the costs of which can be absorbed and the carcass of which can be disposed of. We rightly abhor this attitude of cruelty and indifference, for we realise there is a great chasm between the timely death brought about by the loving hand of the Good Farmer and the hideous violation that comes from the hand of the one who should never be entrusted with something so precious as the life of another.

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And now we come to us. Whether we like it or not, we through our consumptive needs and desires play a part in this cycle of agricultural life and death. For us to feed and nourish ourselves, we must consume something which once had life. The act of eating is the closest relationship we can have to another living creature, whereby it comes inside of us and being broken down, literally becomes part of us⁴. The building blocks of amino acids, nutrients, vitamins, and sugars that once formed the creature are broken down to become the chemicals that in turn constitute our body. The energy that was stored within the seed, the fruit, and the steak becomes energy that fuels our movement and our life. Life coming through death in the act of eating turns each meal into a somewhat sacred event. The right and fitting response to this is the prayer of thanks and blessing that comes before the act of eating. No matter how hard some of us may try to avoid it, whether through vegetarianism or veganism, death will always be with us, inside us, and fuelling us. It is not something to be ashamed of but is meant to make us stop and ponder the sacred mystery of life-giving death.

It is a travesty then that this somewhat sacred act has been desecrated by our cultural gluttony for ultra-processed foods which are packed full of artificiality and bear little resemblance to the fruits of the soil. These ‘foods’ turn our attention away from the farm and farmer to the food corporations and their garish advertising. They make us forget the death that has been wrought so that we may have life. Perhaps in a culture such as ours where death is a forbidden word, this act of invisibilising death is somewhat intentional. Certainly, a lot of money has been poured into making us forget about the farms and farmers that grew the food we consume⁵.

But the unavoidable truth remains, even for these ultra-processed foods, that life comes through death. For somewhere on the packaging amidst all the E-numbers and strange chemical-sounding names, one will find the names of plants and animals - foods which have come from the fields of some nameless farmer who has likely been abused by the corporate food regime. This poor unknown farmer is the one ultimately responsible for the ‘food’ in the brightly coloured wrapper. He is the one who has sweated under the sun so that we may have food for our plates, and he is the one who has had to deal with and mete out death so that we might eat, drink, and be merry. And as we give thanks to God for our food, we should also be mindful and thankful for the many unknown but faithful Good Farmers who have stewarded life and death for us so that we may have life-giving sustenance for our bodies.

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Other relevant essays

1. Apart from hunting and the army.

2. Even though we call them pests, they have done no moral wrong.

3. J. K. A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now.

4. Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press.

5. This is to hide the many injustices and ecological desecrations that are perpetuated on mega-industrial corporate farms, and to the many smallholders who are trapped in toxic contracts with the food corporations.