mission statement
GLENN KAY EVANS FARMS, INC. MISSION STATEMENT
Glenn Kay Evans Farms, Inc. envision establishing a training farm in Wewoka, Oklahoma as an example for others to follow in creating more family farms in various parts of the USA as well as in other areas of the world. Organic farm methods that are environmentally friendly that enhance and rebuild the soil will be utilized. Experiments will be made with no till farming as called out in Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution that have proven so productive in rebuilding the soil. This will offer an opportunity to feed and employ many people in our nation and offer an alternative to the unfriendly mega agribusiness farms that use an excessive amount of pesticides and commercial fertilizers that damage our environment. Most important of all, people will be fed, sheltered, trained and many in time will move out to their own family farms. This is especially important since we are reaching a period of peak oil decline and the need to get away from fossil fuel.
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The main purpose of this 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporation shall be to create a place of food and shelter for those in need and establish on-the-job-training opportunities for people to bring the family farm back where they learn how to grow food and preserve it for later use, to feed and house themselves and dispose of any surplus to help feed others. This can be the ideal place for people who need a home and want to make a fresh start.
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Participants will have the opportunity to learn what real food looks and tastes like, to experience community life, to learn something about the basics of the family farm that not only served the best interests of our country in growing food to feed people, but it was a place where people grew up, learned about hard honest work and self-reliance that launched many on careers that made them a credit to our nation.
To create opportunities for people to share their talents and experience, to train and help in the education of others in useful skills that can be valuable to the community, such as carpentry and various other trades. Other members of the community can teach those deficient in basic education of reading, writing and arithmetic. The farms will provide an array of opportunities for people to help themselves. Many people who join such a project have experience, training and knowledge to help others that could be put to practical use in such an atmosphere.
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Our farm will provide an opportunity for people to help others as well as helping themselves, like training experience for young folks. Homeless folks and older people might want to turn to farm life for its life-giving experience. There are people who have been chewed up by life and want to find a way to put their lives back in order. This shall be a community to help each other, to give a feeling of independence, to train people to move back into society. All who live here shall participate in the community farm as members of the clan in a family-like atmosphere. Later as part of the training, individual plots of ground can be assigned for separate work in order to allow overall experiences in operating an ongoing farm. Like any small community, there are other services and crafts needed that could generate auxiliary businesses. A project like this will help to bring back growth and vitality to many of our rural towns and villages that have been in decline for several years. This first project will create a showcase to serve as a model or prototype to be imitated elsewhere. And it provides basic training in free enterprise. With the experience gained, folks could move on to their own small farms, shops or businesses to become sources of useful productive resources for their communities and the nation. Regardless of their past, the farm will provide an opportunity for those who are willing to work to better themselves. It shall be the policy of Glenn Kay Farms, Inc. to acquire land upon which to bring this about by purchase or by donation. In time other land plots could be acquired and be sold off to be operated as separately owned family farms, with the stipulation attached to the deed that such land must be kept for agricultural purposes and under land trust that prevents price escalation beyond farming means, Competent advisory help will be provided. Experiments at no-till farming as called for in Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution will be conducted. If and when surpluses are generated after a reasonable reserve they would be available for distribution and donation to the local community or other needy causes.
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WHY WE NEED TO RE-ESTABLISH FAMILY FARMS
According to the 2008 UN report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World, an estimated 14% or 963 million people are unable to get enough food to eat to sustain life. Needless to say, most of these people are the poorest, the landless. We are told to fear the terrorists, but the real terrors we face are global in scope and of our own making. Food costs are rising. Rice jumped from $460 a metric ton to $1000 a metric ton. Thousands of farmers in India commit suicide after fifteen years of so-called economic reforms that favor global capitalism. Land is being converted to raising biofuels instead of food. More people are starving. Bees are disappearing. More wars arising over precious resources like land and water are forcing more and more people into refugee camps.
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Food, shelter, health care, and the education of its citizens must be the first priority of all civilized nations. Indigenous societies living in primitive conditions have kept in mind the welfare of their people as well as their environment but civilized societies in their lust for power and wealth have drifted away from this basic principle of life on earth. In recent history agribusiness has pursued the misguided goal that industrializing the growth of food would feed the growing world population. Though mega-agribusiness may increase total food output, it has contributed to the devastation of the environment. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are poisoning our earth and waters. The creation of cash crops for cheap exports has displaced millions of rural people in third world countries that had been self-sustaining for centuries.
The United States Department of Agriculture was set up to support small farms through education and training to encourage and improve better methods of farming. Through the influence of mega-agribusiness and perhaps some of the Department’s own policies to encourage cash crops and to dispose of agricultural surplus and stimulate export crops to enhance the balance of trade, we have witnessed a remarkable decline in family farms. Even our agricultural colleges have been corrupted into favoring agribusiness with their career opportunities rather than family farms that feed people and that are environmentally friendly. We’ve got to figure out how to feed people, counter balance droughts with distribution of food from productive areas and keep the cost of food cheap. With food and shelter, most of us can make do without a lot of the frills we associate with a consumer society. Those useless products make a few people a lot of bucks and they end up in the landfills. Our consumer throwaway society is no longer sustainable, so we must use our talents to help each other and help build a better society. We need to use our brains and imaginations and stop wasting precious resources on wars. We must develop a new mindset, to remember that life is sacred and that the earth is here for us all to share. Primitive agriculture and family farms have been the mainstay of feeding the world for centuries. Family farms are also a wonderful place to raise children and build communities. With this in mind came the idea of forming the Glenn Kay Evans Farms, Inc. to acquire land and set up self-sustaining farms to train and re-educate people for starting their own small family farms. Organic farm practices are to be encouraged as well the farming philosophy of Masanobu Fukuoka as conveyed in his book, The One-Straw Revolution that allows small acreages to support a family without being worked to death. Times are right for such a program. Times are right for a return to family farms. They employ people, are earth friendly and provide real food to feed the world.
Glenn Kay Evans Farms, Inc. has the mission of acquiring more land suitable for small farms after setting up a pilot program for training in the basic essentials of farming. This can become a real plus for our rural communities that have been in decline. A pilot program allows the place and time to work out the kinks and demonstrate how such a program could be replicated and expanded to other communities in the U.S. and perhaps to other nations that have been corrupted by agribusiness. The argument will be made that we must have agribusiness in order to feed the growing population of the world. Agribusiness has proven unfriendly to the earth and has helped to destroy many rural farming communities. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, the world will need to come to terms on the issue of world population. Our earth has its limits on how many people it can support without crowding out and destroying other forms of life. Agribusiness that poisons the earth is not the answer. Unless we alter our thinking and life styles and put some limitation on the growth of human population, we will end up fighting more wars for scarce resources and maybe even eating each other in order to survive.
Such a program such as Glenn Kay Evans Farms, Inc. is vitally needed and I believe that it can be launched and carried forward by those who believe in its Mission Statement. We are not seeking personal wealth or self-aggrandizement with this program. If anyone is so inclined and has the means of making this happen, they are free to make use of any ideas or plans so disclosed, with or without any help from us. This is something that is vitally needed and I do not think we can count on our government’s help because mega-corporations that are agribusiness-friendly have usurped too much control of our government.
We spend billions to subsidize the agribusiness and large farms in the developed world and we spend trillions to subsidize financial institutions. The subsidies of the Western nations’ to their own large farm enterprises have also helped to drive down the price of food products from developing world farmers. This trend along with the high cost of transportation must be reversed. We must get back to feeding ourselves locally. We need to reconnect with the land and to nurture through the family farm. We have seen the resurgence of farmer’s markets. The times are right for a return to family farms. The principles of the small family farm can be adapted to back yards, empty fields and pea patches, both large and small. These enterprises can employ people, are earth friendly and provide real food to feed ourselves and others. Henry J. Kaiser once said problems are opportunities with work clothes. With the present state of the world’s problem in food and starving, we best put on our work clothes and get busy.
