Don't knock "fringing," it's been going on since the 70s. The publicity has been recent. My parents stopped farming their land in the early 80s when I was in junior high (13 to 15 years old.) The US discovered it was cheaper to import wheat, corn, and other crops than to pay fair prices to US farmers. So, many family farms went broke and were abandoned. Luckily my parents had hickory and hazel trees on their land and so were able to harvest and sell the nuts to stay afloat. It put their kids through college.
Jonathan is a lucky man, though, so it's possible he made it through that time and kept his land productive with traditional crops and stock without loss of income. It's fiction after all and there is always a happy ending in Smallville. Plus, the Kents live on a map, not the actual land.
Keeping quiet from now on.
