When we speak of a farmer’s life, the traditional thought of a life of toil in the rural landscape comes to mind. A farmer, with his farm, separated from other farmers like him by the boundaries of his farmland, in which he tends to his own activities. He sows seeds, waters and reaps them in time of harvest. He tends to his cattle.
Farming is his life, and his life revolves around this activity. We can also say that he is a farmer 24 hours, 7 days a week. His interaction with the larger society is occasional. At times he goes to the market to buy farm supplies – seeds, fertilizers and whatever other farm related utilities he may need. He is pretty much isolated from rest of the world as an individual and neither does he need the rest of the world until the time he needs to sell his produce.
Such has been the life of a farmer since a millennia now. Of course, with the advent of time, emergence of technology – his tools and implements have changed. However, his life has intrinsically remained the same. It seems like this life, which is universal across cultures, societies and geographies and time but which was so far intrinsically rural has now been replicated in the urban landscape.
The year is 2020. The world is introduced to the Urban Farmer. His farm is his home, his work is where his home is. He works at home, he also works from home. All hail the Urban Farmer, the 24×7 worker who has formed the bulwark of the world economy against an onslaught of forces which are quite natural in its origins.
The Urban Farmer wakes up at dawn. He has to. It is already day in the time zone of his client. Just like the rural farmer, the end product of the urban farmer is not for his own consumption. It is sent across regions and often sent across geographies, where his produce is valued much more than what it will be valued were it left there, in his farm. The Urban Farmer toils all day from dawn till dusk and beyond, typing away, meeting away, programming away. He has to. His masters, not the government, but the corporation which employs him, will otherwise cease buying his produce. Gone will be his ability to farm, gone will be his produce and as a result – gone will be his life as a farmer. His family will not be fed, he, though the producer of food will go hungry pretty soon. The trials and tribulations of the Urban Farmer are no less significant or less difficult than the rural farmer.
The Urban Farmer, just like his rural counterpart, seldom meets his peers. Of course, he knows, his peers are just living in the borders of his own farm. He does not walk right into his neighbour’s farm though. Oh no, that would be breaking the quarantine he has imposed on his own self. He calls his peer, over the internet. That is his only connection to the outside world, the internet. That is his market, that is his town square. Were the internet to cease forever, it would produce the same effect as the ceasing of the outside world – for the rural farmer. It would ruin his livelihood, it would ruin his life.
So you see, the Urban Farmer forms a part of the new social landscape. His life and times being no different from the producer of food, in the economy. His contribution to the society being no less than that of a real farmer. He has been added to the urban landscape of each country, each culture and each possible economy. His farm implements are digital, his produce intangible.
The world must never forget this Urban Farmer and the Rural Farmer, the real farmer, the complementary pair, which has kept the wheels of the world economy from ceasing. When the dust of war against the forces of nature settle, do remember the Urban Farmer just as fondly you remember the rural one.