【英譯漢必選】

Farms go out of business for many reasons, but few farms do merely because the soil has failed. That is the miracle of farming. If you care for the soil, it will last — and yield — nearly forever. America is such a young country that we have barely tested that. For most of our history, there has been new land to farm, and we still farm as though there always will be.

Still, there are some very old farms out there. The oldest is the Tuttle farm, near Dover, N.H., which is also one of the oldest business enterprises in America. It made the news last week because its owner — a lineal descendant of John Tuttle, the original settler — has decided to go out of business. It was founded in 1632. I hear its sweet corn is legendary.

The year 1632 is unimaginably distant. In 1632, Galileo was still publishing, and John Locke was born. There were perhaps 10,000 colonists in all of America, only a few hundred of them in New Hampshire. The Tuttle acres, then, would have seemed almost as surrounded as they do in 2010, but by forest instead of highways and houses.

It was a precarious operation at the start — as all farming was in the new colonies—and it became precarious enough again in these past few years to peter out at last. The land is protected by a conservation easement so it can’t be developed, but no one knows whether the next owner will farm it.

In a letter on their Web site, the Tuttles cite “exhaustion of resources” as the reason to sell the farm. The exhausted resources they list include bodies, minds, hearts, imagination, equipment, machinery and finances. They do not mention soil, which has been renewed and redeemed repeatedly. It’s as though the parishioners of the First Parish Church in nearby Dover — erected nearly 200 years later, in 1829 — had rebuilt the structure on the same spot every few years.

It is too simple to say, as the Tuttles have, that the recession killed a farm that had survived for nearly 400 years. What killed it was the economic structure of food production. Each year it has become harder for family farms to compete with industrial scale agriculture — heavily subsidized by the government — underselling them at every turn. In a system committed to the health of farms and their integration with local communities, the result would have been different. In 1632, and for many years after, the Tuttle farm was a necessity. In 2010, it is suddenly superfluous, or so we like to pretend.

【參考譯文】

導(dǎo)致農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)的原因有很多種，但是少數(shù)農(nóng)場的破產(chǎn)僅僅是由于土地退化的原因所造成的，這算是農(nóng)業(yè)上的奇跡。如果你能夠照料好土地，那么它就幾乎可以永遠(yuǎn)地產(chǎn)出。美國是這樣一個年輕的國度，以至于我們幾乎無法進行驗證。因為在我們大部分歷史中，總會有新的土地被開墾成農(nóng)場，我們不斷地耕作，好像資源取之不盡。

然而，還是有一些上了歲數(shù)的農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)了。其中歷史最有悠久的莫過于“塔特爾農(nóng)場”——它位于美國新罕布什爾州多佛市附近，也是美國歷史最悠久的商業(yè)公司之一。最近，它的所有人——即農(nóng)場創(chuàng)始人約翰.塔特爾的直系繼承人——宣告破產(chǎn)，從而再次成為新聞。塔特爾農(nóng)場始建于1632年。我聽說它出產(chǎn)的甜玉米是個傳奇。

1632年，一個遙遠(yuǎn)得令人無法想象的歲月。1632年，伽利略還在出版他的著作，約翰.洛克(著名的英國哲學(xué)家)才剛剛出生。在整片美國土地上大概有1萬個殖民者，而在新罕布什爾州只有區(qū)區(qū)幾百人。那時的塔特爾耕地可能與2010年一樣被團團包圍著，只不過大片森林為高度公路和房子所代替。

就像所有新的殖民地上的農(nóng)業(yè)一樣，一開始塔特爾的經(jīng)營也非常不穩(wěn)定。在過去數(shù)年中，這樣的不穩(wěn)定狀況舊病復(fù)發(fā)，最終導(dǎo)致農(nóng)場一步步滑向破產(chǎn)的深淵。受到資源保護的限制(譯者注：easement是地役權(quán))，不能對土地進行開發(fā)。但是沒有人知道農(nóng)場的下一位主人是否會繼續(xù)耕作。

在“塔特爾農(nóng)場”的網(wǎng)站上，塔特爾家族在一封致公眾信中將“資源枯竭”作為出售農(nóng)場的原因。他們所列舉的枯竭資源包括：人力、腦力、想象力、設(shè)備、機器和資金，卻壓根沒提被多次翻新并幫助他們樹立威信的土地。這就好像多佛市附近、始建于1829年的First Parish Church的教區(qū)居民每過幾年就在同一個地方重建教堂一樣。

塔特爾家族的人將有著近400歷史的農(nóng)場的破產(chǎn)歸咎于土地退化，這理由未免太過簡單。使其破產(chǎn)的真正原因其實是食品生產(chǎn)的經(jīng)濟結(jié)構(gòu)。每一年，家庭農(nóng)場都要跟工業(yè)規(guī)模化的農(nóng)業(yè)企業(yè)進行競爭，日子越來越煎熬。這些企業(yè)享受政府大力補貼扶持，以各種渠道以低價出售糧食。在一個致力于農(nóng)場健康并促進農(nóng)場與當(dāng)?shù)厣鐓^(qū)融合一體的體系里，結(jié)果本不該如此。在1632年以及之后的許多年，塔特爾農(nóng)場不可或缺。然而到了2010年，它突然成了多余的東西，或者說被我們看作是一個累贅。