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What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living
- bachmeier 11y agoTo quote Jerry Seinfeld, "I didn't know it was possible to not know that."
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYeah. She actually references the national statistics in her article; I'm surprised that apparently neither she nor her partner checked them out before starting the farm.
- PaulHoule 11y agoI don't think you talked to too many people.
- a2tech 11y agoMy grandfather ran a farm. Small farming isn't profitable. Full stop. Farming scales up really well but not down.
- greggarious 11y agoAnd if you can make back the costs of the equipment, own the land, and create enough food for your family, what value does money have?
- CountSessine 11y agoWas that something that the article author managed to do?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoParticipating in the rest of human civilization?
- rdancer 11y agoIt's good while it lasts, but being a subsistence farmer has its downsides. Once you get a few bad years in a row, or the government decides that farmers don't really matter so eff them, you will appreciate the profits you've put away during the fat years.
- Fomite 11y agoThe ability to occasionally do something besides farming? Send your kids to college?
- mitchty 11y agoI grew up on a farm/ranch. We had about 5000 acres of land, split 3/2 pasture/fields. Even that was barely break even with 14 hour days in the summers. Equipment upkeep and maintenance is the worst.
- TulliusCicero 11y agoDuh. Do these people just forget about the principle of economies of scale? How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? I can understand if you're doing a small farm 'for fun', but don't understand how an otherwise intelligent person can think they can (or should be able to) make good money from it. > As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly needed in this country. If they're truly in demand, one would expect wages or profits to signal that. > none of these things address the policies that dictate how our country’s food system works, policies that have created a society in which the small farmer can’t even earn a living. Some of the policies might not help, but the fundamental reason small farms can't compete is that farming has large economies of scale. Some people may be able to find a niche charging high prices for uncommon goods, but that's never going to be the bulk of the industry. Expecting small farms to be profitable in that way is like expecting cobblers to make a comeback.
- SwellJoe 11y agoI think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market. While there is a minimum viable farm size (given the need for modern machinery to automate the process), most likely, it probably isn't nearly as large as what our current set of incentives enforces. And, historically, there were farming coops that made it possible for communities of farmers to share expenses for those tools (and some states and communities still have legal infrastructure and such to enable those kinds of organizations), but federal policy and mega-store purchasing policy makes it a moot point. There's a lot more to the story of what our agricultural system looks like, and this article only touches on it from one personal, anecdotal, perspective, but it's simplistic to dismiss this perspective and the concerns it raises about our food supply. Michael Pollan has been writing compellingly on the subject for many years, and I recommend you check out The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. They provide a well-research view of why things are so skewed in our food system, and why that is dangerous to our current and future health. "If they're truly in demand, one would expect wages or profits to signal that." On that point, we're agreed...there has to be a way to correct the incentives so that a competitive agriculture market can exist, given the fact that we all need to eat, and ethically speaking, it'd be good if the most affordable foods were among the most healthy and least damaging to the environment. That's not the way things are incentivized currently. As it stands, there's a strong cartel of very large farms and animal agriculture companies that stack the deck in their favor. It isn't merely a story of efficiency of scale, it also includes lobbying, anti-competitive practices, etc.
- chasing 11y ago"That quirky lifestyle business I got into without really knowing much about? For some reason it didn't wind up being a gold mine."
- vermontdevil 11y ago10 acres is not enough. A friend of mine owns 200 acres in Iowa and he has to work off-season to ensure a steady income. But the 200 generated enough $ for him to retire. Wasn't easy though.
- peter303 11y agoDo you mean by selling the land? The last few years until this year there was boom in farmland prices.
- vermontdevil 11y agoNo still owns it. Rents it out now. But the ups and downs of income from farming made him work two jobs. Some years the crops brought in good money. Some years nothing. He managed to saved enough so he can retire. But he told me he thinks 200 acres is the bare minimum to see some money if you are smart about it. The more acres the better obviously. And the farmer in the article only has 10???
- vacri 11y agoOn the other hand, farmers will always find a way to complain. I was reading a farming rag from a nearby town, and the canola crop was a bumper one, the best year ever. Response from the farmers? "Yeah, well with so much canola on the market, the unit price will be down" Don't get me wrong, farming is hard work, but the farmers I've encountered rarely have much positive to say about their work particulars. A bit like sysadmins, really.
- vermontdevil 11y agoha I guess a complaining farmer is a happy farmer?
- peter303 11y agoI live in Colorado. Lots of profitable small farms here. You just need the right crop :-)
- SwellJoe 11y agoI suspect that is temporary. The bureaucracy is already very large in the pot industry, and will grow with time...the big players will guarantee regulators stack the deck in their favor. As legalization spreads across the country, growing will be concentrated in a few areas where it grows most easily and with the cheapest labor and most favorable legal climate (just as tobacco is concentrated in a few places). The big players may be new ones, but agricultural history in the US indicates the small players will get pushed out as the market matures.
- unabridged 11y agoI think the marijuana industry will more resemble the wine industry. Large bulk producers will cover the cheap end of the market but there will still be many highly respected small players.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI don't have much experience with marijuana. Does it actually have the kind of brand dynamics wines have? Can we expect people to prefer indulging in the pot equivalent of 10 or 50 years old wine if they can afford it?
- SwellJoe 11y agoThat's a reasonable theory. Marijuana is not (currently) physically addicting, though I wouldn't put it past the tobacco companies to figure out ways to make it physically addicting and brand specific in its addictive properties...I'd even bet they're working on it. So, in that regard is may be similar to wine, which though it does contain an addictive substance, most addicts are not wine drinkers as it is a very expensive source of alcohol. I still tend to think it will shake out similarly to tobacco, moreso than wine, but it's an interesting thought experiment to consider which substance it more resembles and how it will end up being regulated, taxed, and corporatized, in the long term as legalization spreads.
- tcskeptic 11y agoHas the American small farmer ever been able to make a living?
- jacquesm 11y agoSmall time farmers in NL have cash crops growing in their attics. It is quite amazing how many people will consider doing something illegal if it makes enough money. Even people you'd never expect it of suddenly become experts in photosynthesis and hydroponics. Who'd have known that so many people discovered that they had green fingers after all when they can't distinguish a weed from a crop plant under other conditions.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI suppose they're also about to become experts in thermal insulation and waste heat management, given that some people got busted when their roofs suddenly become the only ones in the neighborhood that didn't accumulate snow in winter.
- WJW 11y agoOnly because it's still illegal to grow it legitimately. How many of those small time farmers will keep doing it (for the money) when the government finally gives out some licenses to farm it commercially and the bulk marihuana price becomes a hundred to a thousand times lower?
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoMy parents were small farmers. It is hard, hard work. They succeeded by focusing carefully on areas that weren't being served by the Agri-biz corporates. They chose several different specialties and worked them each hard to make a modest living. What I learned from it was to stay away from farming as anything more than a hobby.
- snydly 11y agoMy great grandparents had a small farm in Massachusetts between the 30's-50's. They had 8 kids (free labor for ~20 years). They did well enough to send all their kids to college, but not much beyond that. Something tells me you can do okay with a small farm if you're a poor German immigrant who fought in WWI because you're not expecting much anyway. Happy to not be starving. The woman in the article should've expected less from the beginning. They can chalk it up as a learning experience, I guess.
- warmcat 11y agoSmall farmers are always just on the edge of poverty. I know this first hand since my parents own a farm (~3 acres and not in the US) and don't generate enough revenue to even get to a point of breaking even. The equipment, water, fertilizers, pesticides always have to be paid for regardless of whether you get a good crop or not. Add nature's whim on top of that too and you will see why small farmers are disappearing from the map.
- mikestew 11y agoTen acres? Has anyone ever made a living off ten acres? Where I come from (Midwestern U. S.), that's a hobby farm. And that assumes the person running the place is even a decent business person. Some won't succeed whether they own ten acres or a nail salon.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoTen acres is just a big garden, not a farm.
- analog31 11y ago...we gained no equity because we didn’t own the land... Farming on rented land seems like the original Uber. You're workers, with no guarantee of even minimum wage. A couple of friends in the restaurant business have told me: Never open a restaurant if you don't own the building.
- sjtgraham 11y agoFeudal serfdom is the original Uber.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoEverything seems to run in circles, some apparently greater than others.
- marshray 11y agoI remember a great sandwich shop (Sadlack's in Chapel Hill if anyone remembers). The building owners kicked them out and opened a similarly-themed restaurant with a very very similar menu. Even the names of the sandwiches were heavily derivative.
- zekevermillion 11y agoHobby farming can make sense if you want to own a lot of land as an investment. If you don't farm it, in most states it gets assessed at a much higher residential rate for tax purposes. So it pays to farm, even if the business is break-even.
- tptacek 11y ago10 acres is microscopic. The average small family farm is over 220 acres.
- tptacek 11y agoFurther into the article: According to USDA data from 2012, intermediate-size farms like mine, which gross more than $10,000 but less than $250,000, obtain only 10 percent of their household income from the farm, and 90 percent from an off-farm source. The words "like mine" here are misleading, because this farm is nothing at all like the farms the author is referring to. For one thing, virtually all the farms the author is comparing itself to are an order of magnitude bigger. But then: One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots. The man asked how things were going. Financially, I mean. He held a head of lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his hand. Most small family farms are not walk-up retail operations; they work through distributors and co-ops. Modern farming is also intensely technical. There was a time in American history where you could make a living as a wheelwright, too. It's not an outrage that you need to be a major corporation to build vehicles today.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI just got bitten by not having an ad blocker installed on the current browser. You know what this[0] looks like? That nice "You may also like" box? Like a fucking end of the article. Except it isn't. It's only a half of it. Seriously, fuck you Salon. I guess you don't care if people actually read the stuff you post. EDIT Oh, I know why it tricked me. Because the rest of the article only loads when you scroll past that ad. What the fuck. [0] - http://imgur.com/SMBtRkO http://imgur.com/SMBtRkO
- detaro 11y agoWTF. I wondered why the article ended so suddenly...
- vonnik 11y agoIt's probably good to remind people yearning for the simple life that you can't make a living on most small farms, but it's not really surprising. The Green Revolution made it easy for a few people to feed a lot of people, fundamentally altering the ratio of farmers to consumers. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Green_Revolution https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Green_Revolution And despite concerns about food security, the US has consistently used agriculture as a bargaining chip in its trade agreements and foreign policy, opening our markets to countries that can produce food more cheaply than US operations can. Reagan, Hollywood's rhinestone cowboy, did a lot to destroy cattle ranching in the US by opening the market up to Canadian beef. Same dynamic. Small farmers will only make money by focusing on cash crops that are organic, local, and other adjectives that Whole Foods customers are willing to pay for...
- tejohnso 11y agoSix thousand pounds of food on a tenth of an acre bringing in $20,000/yr. How's that for scaling down? http://urbanhomestead.org/urban-homestead http://urbanhomestead.org/urban-homestead
- mysterypie 11y agoThe typical family farmer in the U.S. is a millionaire because of assets. They have poor earnings and they whine a lot, but they are sitting on top of land, tractors, and buildings worth millions. The average U.S. farmer could cash out, buy a house in Miami, and never work a day again in their lives. But they don't do so. They apparently like the country lifestyle and continue their struggle even though they don't have to. Obviously the couple in the Salon article can't cash out and retire because they don't own their own land, and it's just a sliver of land at that.
- knughit 11y agoIs that true? They don't have mortgages?
- mysterypie 11y agoThe average farm family has owned it for generations. The Salon couple is atypical in that they got into the business rather than inheriting it.
- biggestbob 11y agoIs this the USA problem or do small farmer have same problem in other country too? If all world has same problem it is very sad.
- contingencies 11y agoIf these people are looking to make money, then they need to either lower their expenses or up their prices. On the former side, there are very well documented examples of commercial success from organic farming using naturally focused practices instead of the fertilizer and weeding processes common to traditional western-style farms. A good point to start reading there is the Japanese microbiologist that popularized the approach - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka On the output side, direct supply deals with restaurants or consumers in higher income areas (ie. possibly not local, but a large city nearby ... SF comes to mind) could be an excellent way to get higher return on individual crops by volume. Yes, this would necessitate a drive. But they probably do it now and then anyway, and it might just pay for itself. As a bonus, the article mentioned that the author's husband was a woodworker: knocking together some rustic wooden crates for deliveries to look the part is not something difficult at scale. As a bonus, these type of delivery deals can be worded "by the crate" and "in-season", allowing more reliable distribution of crops and releasing pressure to grow things on the edge of or out of their natural season, which can necessitate higher investment, time inputs and risk on a per-crop basis. I firmly believe that being relatively close to SF, it must be possible to distribute organic crops and make money. The author simply hasn't figured out a working model yet.
- wooooo 11y agoIn addition to not doing their research, this is a great example of how destructive the west coast "fake it 'til you make it" attitude can be. Not only are they missing out on numerous opportunities by not being more honest with their neighbors (local farmers giving advice, neighbors patronizing them more if they know they aren't doing well and really do need their business, someone who knows a guy who runs a restaurant getting them a supplier deal, etc), I'm sure the stress and senseless alienation they suffer from "living a lie" isn't healthy either.