Susan Machum grew up on a farm near Oak Point, N.B., one she felt she would be happy to leave behind.
And so she did, travelling, studying and researching.
But the farm refused to leave Machum and with each successive experience, she found herself ever more drawn into the serious problems facing the state of farming, farmers and rural communities in Canada and New Brunswick today.
It has become the focus of her life’s work and, as of this past fall, Machum has been granted a second phase of study as the Canada Research Chair in rural social justice at St. Thomas University.
“Socio-economic problems in the rural setting include a vast range of inter-connected issues – low product return, low wages and inherently high family debt loads often result in an excessive poverty rate,” Machum said.
All three levels of Machum’s graduate and post-graduate research investigated a specific area of women’s work in agriculture.
In 1987, she received her bachelor of arts in sociology from St. Thomas University. She then went on to complete her master’s degree in sociology at Dalhousie University in 1992, and finally attained her PhD, again in sociology, at Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1999.
“Social issues are very often women’s issues, a consequence of the un-valued or undervalued but critical contribution women make towards the family farm and rural life in general.”
Machum’s work also focuses on how the health of urban communities depend on the health of rural communities.
Over the last half century, the number of farms in the province has shrunk from approximately 26,500 to under 3,000, she said.
Despite huge tracts of land that are now or once were agriculturally rich in the province, New Brunswick currently imports the vast majority of the food it consumes.
The handful of products that could be produced here are now being supplied more and more from the large “factory farm.”
As a result, rural communities are suffering a slow insidious erosion, Machum said, and her family is a case in point.
“While they [five generations] built a very prosperous farm, it did not survive into the present day. Instead the land… stands in the middle of CFB Gagetown, one of the largest military bases in Canada, and is accessible to family descendants to visit grave sites one day a year.”
Machum believes current government policy is skewed toward supporting dependence on a global, industrial food system and, as a result, she has joined forces with the New Brunswick Food Security Action Network.
“The global food system emphasizes growing dollars over safe, local and sustainable food sources. This group is concerned with the environmental and human impacts of industrial food production systems, as well as the maldistribution of food and resources in general.”
Over the next several years, Machum’s research will continue to examine and assess current agricultural and social policies and help to formulate new, sound practices that support a viable local (short chain supply) food market system, one that is balanced and sustainable in the long run.
But more than this, Machum will be striving to find ways to revitalize the integral and vibrant way of life that once was rural New Brunswick, “hopefully before it’s too late.”
