Mason - Shawnee

I thought the article was interesting. The author does a nice job showing how small-scale farmers are not getting the kind of support you would expect with all the recent focus on local food and sustainability. She does confuse the issue a little bit, making it seem that small-scale and organic agriculture are synonymous, in opposition to industrial and conventional agriculture. In reality, there are industrial organic farms and small-scale conventional farms. Meanwhile, the subsidies she talks about aren't given specifically to conventional or industrial farms - they are given to any farmer who grows wheat, corn, soybeans, or several other crops...whether they do it organically or conventionally. Either way, the article does point out the difficult position that small-scale farmers find themselves in.