Is my farm becoming a museum

What a pleasure it is to be able to show young children where food comes from but I suspect by the time young Lola here grows up I will be lamenting how great it is to show children the traditional ways of farming. How the old folk did it. 

Earlier this year I was in a retail shop chatting to a sales assistant I knew,  he is about 25 years old, university student and quite a bright lad. We were talking about my small farm and I mentioned I had Black Angus cattle. He asked what I had them for?  Taken back a little I asked him if he went to McDonalds and had he eaten a Black Angus burger.  “oh” he exclaimed, “I though that was just the name of the burger they came up with who would have thought it was the type of meat”.  Well bugger me, I realized the type of meat and where it came from didn’t matter. 

Bill Gates and Richardson Branson in 2017 invested in Memphis Meats a ‘fake’ meat company that had already produced beef, chicken and duck directly from stem cells. I just wonder how long it will be before the greatest percentage of any processed meat products will have been grown in a dish rather than a paddock. Great for overcoming world hunger but I for one would miss seeing cattle in paddocks. 

The economics of vertical farming is fairly conclusive, vegetables can be grown indoors, organically and chemically free 21% cheaper than outdoors in a field. The space of 4 shipping containers can produce the same food quantity as 2 acres and use considerable less water as its recycled. Again this is great news for world hunger and poorer countries can have food factories build to become self sustaining rather than food shipped across the world dependent of the good will of other people’s generosity.  

In less than 10 years a Supermarket as we know it could just have evolved into a building with another storey added doubling the size of the structure and producing all ‘fresh’ food sold right there ion site. Cheaper, completely organic, using less water, less carbon emissions and  future proof against global warming. 

I will be sad when that day arrives but unlike Taxi drivers who didn’t see Uber coming, or the hotels who didn’t see Airbnb  or even photographic film suppliers who didn’t see digital cameras coming and adapt, my eyes are open. I started my small farm to be self sufficient, time will tell, but soon enough I could actually own a small museum to farming.