Overview

The Land That Calls Me Home investigates the disappearance of small-scale farms from rural America and casts a vision for the church to lead in their recovery. The book goes beyond naming the usual suspects of industrialization, agricultural policies, and corporations most often blamed or credited with orchestrating the mass exodus of farmers from rural America and brings to light two overlooked contributors to driving farmers away from the land: Theology and the Church. The author shows how a misinterpretation of scripture erroneously equates farming with God's curse on Adam for eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. That fallacy lies at the root of the uncontested takeover of agriculture by corporate powers. The takeover centralized farming so that today a few giant corporations monopolize global farm markets and only one-percent of all Americans farm full time. Globalizing farming promised to free the masses from the curse of having to work the land to survive. The author debunks the portrayal of tilling the soil as a curse and interprets the curse rather as the separation of human beings from the soil. The more distance we create between ourselves and the soil, the less healthy the earth and our human bodies become. Therefore, restoring the viability of small-scale farming is a means of counteracting the curse on Adam and the soil. The church has been an accomplice to the theft of agriculture from the people and forcing their mass migration from rural farmsteads to suburbs and cities. The church saw the increase in productivity of those who were left to farm on a large scale as a positive development to be celebrated. The negative impact of farming with pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified organisms (altered seed), and chemical fertilizers, along with the effect of agricultural runoff on the soil, rivers, oceans, and on human health were seen as negligible compared to the promise of increased yield that could be used to eradicate global hunger. Corporate greed, however, has stockpiled food while millions die of malnutrition annually. Furthermore, the church has too often separated the care of souls from the care of the earth and ceded earth and health care to government and free enterprise. In shrinking rural communities, decimated by the migration of farmers to the city, a few dwindling churches have remained open long enough to care for the lingering souls and to bury the dead. By confessing our complicity in causing the current farm crisis in America, church leaders can with renewed vision help restore the viability of small-scale farming in rural communities on the fringes of larger population centers. Churches can serve as network hubs for farmers, whose crops are too small to win contracts with large grocery chains, to sell their produce in local Farmers Markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) networks. Churches that catch the vision to support local agriculture have the volunteer base, the parking lots, and the presence in their communities to organize and run an effective Farmers Markets. They provide a service to the farmers and to their community while reconnecting people to the soil. The author sees the loss and revival of small-scale farming from the standpoint of a pastor and a farmer. He grew up on and moved from a small-scale farm and has served in pastoral ministry 40 years, including the last 20 years when he has also farmed. He believes the small-scale farm's best chance of financial solvency is having more local markets, which churches in population centers are ideally positioned to provide. He worked with the church he served in Huntsville, Alabama to organize a Farmers Market in their parking lot. After moving to serve Decatur First United Methodist Church in 2015, he was appointed by the City Council to the Decatur-Morgan County Farmers Market Board of Directors. He consults with pastors and congregations seeking ways to support local agriculture

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Hughey Reynolds is a United Methodist pastor in Alabama. He grew up on a family farm in Lineville where he still spends many days off and vacations farming. His father was a bi-vocational preacher and his mother a rural preacher's daughter. He grew up in a time and place in which church and farm still worked together naturally to build strong rural communities. In attempting to rebuild the farm his family had left in the 1970s, Hughey began to see the injustice of government policy and corporate pressure that drove farmers over the past seventy years to either get big or get out of farming. He realized he had been mesmerized by the industrial side of farming and blinded to this injustice. Hughey is now an advocate for restoring the viability of small farms for the sake of local food security, the human connection with the soil, and the health of the earth and its inhabitants. Hughey is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. Prior to his present appointment in Huntsville, Hughey served churches in Birmingham, Sylacauga, Florence, Valley, Wedowee, Chelsea, and Ashland, Alabama. While in Birmingham, Hughey led Highlands Church to form the Southside Community Garden. The project engaged church members and garden neighbors in all phases of gardening. The church entered a partnership with neighboring Ramsay High School to build raised bed gardens for students to plant, tend, harvest, and study. In Huntsville, Hughey has volunteered at CASA (Care Assistance System for the Aging) Community Garden and enlisted church members to grow a raised bed garden at neighboring Hope Presbyterian Church to support CASA. In 2012, he formed the Grow Your Own Food Network where experienced and novice gardeners met weekly to ask and answer questions about gardening. Participants formed the core group that inspired seasonal Locally Grown Covered Dish Suppers and a Farmers Market at the church. The Farmers Market at Latham opened on May 7, 2013. In the first summer, the half-day-a week market generated over $150,000 for the farmers who sold their produce there. Hughey consults with pastors and churches on food-source awareness and in developing ministries that support area farmers and promote locally grown food. Hughey is married (1975) to the former Sandy Jones of Ashland, Alabama. She is a Human Resource Manager for a Government Contractor in Huntsville. They have two married sons and daughters-in-law and one grandchild, all of whom live in Alabama.

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