Dear Twenty-First-Century Farmer,
Each time you place a seed into your soil,
What do you think about?
Do you think of fast cash
To replace your brain
With a larger, more digitized tractor?
Insect eradication for abundant crops?
Vocabulary rested on faster, more, faster, more?
Or do faces of your grandchildren, their grandchildren
Play among the images in your head?
The inheritors of your soil.
Each time you place a seed into your soil,
Do you get down on your back,
Look up at white clouds dancing, dancing –
Pesticides free, gathering raindrops
For Earth’s purification?
Each time you place a seed into your soil,
Can you take a fistful of soil –
Taste the taste of soil
As they were before you were courted
By “Big 6” pesticide and GMO corporations –
BASF, Bayer, Dupong, Dow Chemical Co. Monsanto, Syngenta ?
Oh, farmer of the twenty-first century,
Are you indignant of these questions?
Do I hear your “How dare you” –
How dare you
Question the integrity of my soul.
How dare you,
Before my grandchildren
And their future children.
I
am
not
a
farmer
for
sale.
–Frances H. Kakugawa
