With several crises hanging over society, many have an ambivalent relationship with the farmer. We are grateful for the food, but still ask: Do you deplete soil and resources, do you pollute the globe, do you deprive animals of a life in freedom, and do you get too much subsidies?
My dad is a farmer, I am a farmer's son, and I wonder who we are. Shouldn't everyone know who we are? This project is a search for answers about my own identity, about what I am, what my parents are and what farmers are: heroes or villains?
The project explores an identity crisis as well as a social crisis, and intends to highlight problems the world faces in relation to agriculture. It reflects on how society distributes blame and looks at certain social functions, and wonders about what we see as right and wrong.
The title of the project, “Bondetamp", is a Norwegian, negatively charged expression that can label those from the countryside – people like myself. While working on this project, I have stayed at the family farm in Northern Norway, visited farms in the area around this, in addition to having visited farms around Oslo in Eastern Norway.
As I was traveling the countryside, I wondered: Is it the farmer or the society that should feel guilty? People want more, and they want it better and cheaper. The farmer can do nothing but follow. Isn’t it a paradox that those who satisfies our most basic needs also are a threat for the planet we live on?
Considering population growth, climate change, pressure on natural resources, rising commodity prices and an ongoing pandemic, the farmer is balancing on a knife-edge – for both his own and everyone else's survival. The farmer must withstand resistance and at the same time be resilient.