Jefferson’s vision of the family farm is a myth that won’t die

BY STEVEN CONN Nov 27, 2023 READ

Pity the poor American farmer. Since the 18th century, he has been freighted not simply with growing crops or raising animals, but with carrying the virtue of the American republic. Thomas Jefferson said so himself, writing that: “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”

He believed that independent yeoman farmers were the only Americans capable of preserving the new nation’s morals and keeping it from “corruption”. Since then, the American family farm has always stood for a way of life — the best way of life, in fact — and it has been venerated almost religiously. A heavy burden indeed.