Good Earth.

The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl Buck published in 1931. The story is about a farmer's life in China in the 1920s. Later she was awarded the Nobel Prize for writing about Chinese farmer’s story.
During 1931 and 1932, this book was the best-selling book in America. The author spends half of her life in China due to her missionary parents. I will not introduce the book of the story in this column.

When I grew up in Korea then, it was a top-rated book to read. After reading the book I was very much fascinated by the life of farmers and the desire of farmers to own the farmland.
Besides my grandparents were farmers who owned big vegetable farms in our village.
When I got up in the morning, my grandfather was already coming back from the farm after walking around all the sections of farmland where the vegetables were growing. It made me feel secure and gave me feel of happiness. Since the farm provided us with more than enough food and could lead a comfortable life as well could send all of his grandchildren to University.

After when I came to Canada, I always wanted to purchase a farm, so I have become a small-scale grain farmer. As everybody knows the land on this Earth is not possible to expand forever, yet the population of this Earth is growing every year. So, the farmers have to grow enough food to provide to feed almost every living thing. Before 1 acre's farmland produced ½ tons of grain, now it grows four times more with the help of fertilization and cultivation skills of better farmland like installing drainage pipes in wet areas. Still, it has limited to do that as well, so the big high-tech companies introduce AI[ Artificial intelligence] to improve the quality of soil and better equipment and labor.

As farmers, we are members of OFA, which represents the farm sectors. They support and invest in research into processes and issues that play a key role in developing land and providing knowledge and new plans for agriculture. However, the communities grew fast and needed the land for residential, commercial, recreational, and factory sites that had to be used for good farmland causing more strain on the farmland.

Another thing is that soil health is very important, so we have to set goals for short and long-term practice for the soil that has to practice crop rotation. Besides we have to think about the environmental impact on land.

During the past couple of years, the farmland price has gone up a lot, which is why the price of food has gone up a lot like everything else. Even as a farmer, the price of land is too high to acquire more farmland.

The world is growing, now we need more new awareness for farming and food.

April 7th, 2024.