Jonathan LeMaster-Smith

This post was originally published on my Facebook on July 9th, 2025

Now, a word on cuts in food assistance.

One thing we need to be reminded of when we talk about food insecurity in rural spaces is that rural does not equal agrarian. The assumption that all rural people can or know how to farm is an idyllic misrepresentation of rural life that are often intentional uses of the “appeal to the stone fallacy” and “wishful thinking” logical fallacies.

Images of rural life that paint pictures that are either total despair or total pastoral paradise are not helpful (and often intentionally neutering of the realities at play). Yes, I can grown food, many in my community can, but not all rural people know how, nor does everyone have the land, knowledge, or ability to grow food. Same with hunting, fishing, and foraging.

The next argument of “they grow the food there,” can’t they just go the farm and get it (or work for it) is not helpful. Farmers and ranchers usually have contracts with corporations. They are not allowed to just give their produce away. I have read articles and talked with farmers about how they were instructed to plow under fields of greens or pour out thousands of gallons of milk by their buyers. If they were to give this food away, they may be in violation of contract and not only lose money but be sued by their contractual buyer.

Nor should we get into a “will work for food” model out of desperation. Again, a bad reading of 2nd Timothy is not helpful. And yes, I would love a society were food was truly free, but until we get there, the government taking food services away from the most vulnerable is dangerous.

And yes, churches can and should help, non-profits can and should help, but as many folks remind us, these entities are already stretched thin (and part of their funding often comes from these federal funds – yes some churches receive federal funding for this). This is further strained by the reality of compassion fatigue from a new crisis every news cycle.

Another myth is the lazy person living off the government. This is rarely the case. There average person receiving food assistance looks more like a single parent who works multiple jobs, an elderly person receiving meals on wheels, or a disabled person who struggles with mobility.

In this midst of this, we need a reimagining of food and resource distribution from a melding of rural, historic, and biblical models of connection that are realistic. The idea of Jubilee, even in biblical times, was not a magical solution, and making do on known land and sea takes a relentless endurance is going to look more like a wilderness journey than a promised land ideal.

I know that I am likely to get good intentioned anecdotes on this post that accidently become “cherry-picking” and “magic bullet” fallacy tools that want to be helpful but become an opiate that assuages our anxieties. Examples as just that, examples, are nice and welcome. But none of us have the power to fix everything with a folk tale.

Hope, as I see it, requires an aggressive endurance that can overcome false happy endings and an immediate eschatology, knowing that new seasons follow the present realities, and that we can not just “get by” or “make do” but find ways to thrive in each new season based on our faith, culture, and heritage.