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As a small farmer, I can tell you: independent small-scale farming is not profitable in any meaningful manner. Government is actively killing it, by giving awa

• xu3u32 5y ago
  I am someone who usually gets their beef from costco, small middle eastern markets and sometimes when its on sale at the neighborhood grocery store (Publix). Would you mind sharing in what ways what I'm consuming is trash compared to what comes from small farms?
  • AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    It's true; it is. This year I bought half of a red angus cow straight from the farm. It turns red when it gets cooked. It's a sight to behold. The stuff you buy at the costco has been frozen and unfrozen at least twice before you buy it. That's already a meaningful difference. They clearly treat it with some sort of coloring agent. In the 30 years I have cooked meat, nothing can prepare you for real beef that comes straight from the source. If it's USDA approved it ain't right.
    • voakbasda 5y ago
      You are absolutely correct. It all starts with better nutrition. CAFO cows that end up at the supermarket are fed low-quality grains and feedstocks, rather than grass that they were evolved to eat. The difference between grain and grass fed beef is amazing. USDA processing is a complete farce. I can only sell locally, because I am not willing to send my animals to such facilities. Instead, I can only sell here in my home state, because that's the only way I can say that my animals were born, raised, and died humanely on my farm. The butcher will drop them where they stand, eating a final meal in the conditions that they were raised. If I want to go with USDA in order to sell my products out of state, by the cut, or to resellers (e.g. restaurants), then I must load my animals onto a trailer, haul them almost two hours away, and allow them to suffer the trauma of that experience before finally being slaughtered in inhumane conditions. I can tell you right away: that experience severely damages the quality of the meat. Big ranches can afford their own USDA facilities, but small farms must share the slowly dwindling number of processors that still serve the public. There are less than two dozen in my entire state, so you currently need to book them further out than the entire lifespan of the animals that you plan to raise. Right now, my processor has completely booked 2022; a new farmer cannot get any animals processed there until 2023! Seriously, fuck the USDA.
      • bee_rider 5y ago
        Any thoughts on Mobile Slaughter Units? Your focus on being less cruel to your cows is pretty admirable, but I don't really see how average consumers could evaluate whether their local farm is: * Putting in the sort of extra effort that you are * Following safety protocols more generally I dunno. I'm not super attached to meat, so I'd probably quit eating it before putting in the effort to eat it ethically. Actually when I put it that way, I should probably quit it...
        • voakbasda 5y ago
          The USDA allows Mobile Slaughter Units. My state does not have one, because it's too expensive to bootstrap. We're talking millions of dollars of capital expenditures to get one running, because you still need a non-mobile facility in which to finish processing and pack the meat. None of the existing processors are willing to invest in such a venture, when their existing facilities are increasingly being regulated out of existence. No one is building new USDA facilities to serve small farmers.
          • vwcx 5y ago
            One counterexample to this might be the field harvesting of bison. Starting to see more 'artisanal' buffalo ranching that stress the positive ethics and efficiency of slaughtering in the field as needed. Of course, they still do need a partnership with a local processor to make field harvesting work.
        • AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
          The way to do it is to meet the farmer. We had a nice hour long walk & talk with the farmer we went with here in middle TN. He gave us $50 worth of free samples at the end and checked in with us a few times to see if we were able to get a good meal out of the sample meat. We saw his process, we met the cows and saw first-hand how he cared for them. We also saw that he cared - he cared a lot. When you think about it, this is the stuff you're going to feed your family. We put in a lot of effort when buying a car but not when buying our food. It's amazing what a little effort and thought can get you out here though, in "the sticks."
    • graaben 5y ago
      How did you go about finding a farm to buy from? I'm very interested in doing this.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • freedomben 5y ago
        I'm in Eastern Idaho, and you can find small ranchers to buy meat from pretty easily on local Facebook pages. I even met one at the park and just started up a conversation. In the end it wasn't cheaper (It was about the same price as Costco) and I had to buy at least a half cow, but the quality was so good I can't even believe it sometimes.
      • mynameisash 5y ago
        I haven't done this yet, but The Omnivore's Dilemma mentions EatWild.com as a resource for finding "beyond organic" food. That might be a good place to start.
    • matchbok 5y ago
      In absolutely no way does any beef sold in stores contain artificial color.
      • e44858 5y ago
        I frequently see "nitrites" in the ingredients list, whose main purpose is to color the meat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrite#Color_and_taste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrite#Color_and_taste
        • xyzzyz 5y ago
          They don’t add nitrites to raw meat, only to processed one. Nitrites is why your ham is pink instead of gray. But, more importantly than color, nitrites are added as a preservative, to avoid botulism.
          • kbart 5y ago
            Wasn't the claim that nitrites help against botulism denied few years ago? According to Guardian: "A bombshell internal report written for the British meat industry reveals nitrites do not protect against botulism"[0] 0. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/23/nitrites-ham-bacon-cancer-risk-additives-meat-industry-confidential--report https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/23/nitrites-ham-ba...
      • ironchef 5y ago
        Modified air packaging with carbon monoxide is _very_ common in the US. So the “artificial color” isn’t some dye or something… it’s how the myoglobin reacts to the MAP.
  • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    I buy grass-fed beef from my neighbor. There's no difference as far as I can see. I like to support my neighbor, but there's no magic, no difference cooking, no startling color-change tricks as reported elsewhere in this thread.
    • gutitout 5y ago
      Maybe it’s not grass-fed. Kidding. Really though if it was you could taste it. In some cases I prefer grain fed cows cause they just taste better. However the fat ratio of healthy to unhealthy fat, omega 3 to omega 6, is a major reason to go grass-fed.
      • b112 5y ago
        May depend on the grass! The flavour comes from variety of grasses, which is why wild meat tastes so different. I've has farm raised deer/venison, and wild was much better .. So maybe the grass was just ...
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
        Let me look out the window .... yup! There they are, eating grass.
    • ratsmack 5y ago
      That may be because many "grass-fed" farmers do a 120 day corn finish which adds weight quickly. This makes the beef more like what is produces commercially.
      • poulsbohemian 5y ago
        The rancher I buy beef from is a multi-generation family friend. I can tell the years he's finished on grain vs. the years he hasn't. Same Angus beef on the same grass fields, drinking the same mountain spring water, same mobile kill operation. But, some years it's obvious in the taste and texture he has mixed in corn / grains into the diet. To the other poster asking about mobile kill operations - it's less stress on the animals, and that ultimately does yield a better product. So whether you view it through the lens of tasty meat or animal welfare, in both cases it's a win.
  • xd 5y ago
    I took on some caged hens (about 6months back now) that were off for slaughter to be turned into dog food. Straight away they took to the patch of land in my garden I gave them and laid eggs .. the eggs they lay are on another level to anything store bought. I can put a pan of water on boil over a stove; crack an egg into it and have a perfect poached egg 2-3mins later. They are creamy and rich as if they have life compared to what now tastes almost rancid in store eggs. Waking up at sun rise every day to let them out is a pain but more than worth it. That said I wouldn't recommend keeping hens unless you've had exposure to them on some level other than visiting a farm.
    • zwieback 5y ago
      I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up. I didn't like getting up at 4:30 in the summer. At night I still manually closed it since I had to make sure I didn't lock a skunk or possum in with the chickens.
      • inetknght 5y ago
        > I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up. That's pretty cool. Is it battery operated? Do you have your chicken coup next to your home or did you run power to the hen house?
        • zwieback 5y ago
          The coop was maybe 60 ft away so I opted for a battery that I'd have to recharge every few weeks. I don't have chickens right now but if I ever get more I'll use a small solar charger and maybe add a few more bells and whistles. I lost a lot of chickens to raccoons and hawks so maybe next time I'd actually do a fully enclosed chicken run.
      • wiredfool 5y ago
        Funny, I had it auto open at 8am and close at civil twilight automatically, and it was the auto closing that was the much bigger deal for me.
  • mastazi 5y ago
    I grew up on a farm in Italy and for years I could not eat supermarket meat as I found it absolutely awful, so it might be a habit that forms over time. Note that this was not about beef because we didn't have cattle (beef is the only meat we had to buy from outside), anyway in my experience grass-fed high quality beef tastes definitely nothing like supermarket meat... it's not just the taste but the tenderness/consistency/texture.
  • belorn 5y ago
    To take ground beef as an example, when I put typical store bought beef in the pan there will be a lot of liquid forming and boiling. Ground beef from small farms tend to need a bit more butter as it has much less water content in it. It not uncommon to hear cooks that always ground their own beef in order to control water and fat content.
• MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  The food in stores is cheap. And that matters to consumers more than whatever alleged quality small-time farmers can produce (was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt).
  • ramesh31 5y ago
    (was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt). It absolutely was, but of course there was less of it. Have you ever had real farm fresh eggs from a free range chicken? It's a completely different thing from those white shells with bright yellow yolks you get at the grocery store. Same goes for vegetables. Ever had a home grown tomato? Those things are worth their weight in gold. The grocery store version is really just a bunch of water in the shape of a tomato.
    • yostrovs 5y ago
      The reason the store egg shells are white is because the Leghorn breed is the most productive layer and it produces white shells. But to compare our homestead eggs to the store's, you can simply hard boil the two and then use a knife to cut the eggs in half. Our pampered chickens make much denser yolks that are much harder to cut. There's clearly more of something in them.
  • voakbasda 5y ago
    Studies repeatedly have shown that micronutrients do not get replenished in monoculture crops, resulting in a measurable decrease in nutrition available in food grown in that soil. So, yes, food was actually better a hundred years ago.
    • pfdietz 5y ago
      Micronutrients are, by definition, present in micro amounts, so they can be fully replenished artificially with only small additions of material.
      • freedomben 5y ago
• lettergram 5y ago
  Having been all over the country it’s amazing to me how different Wyoming and say Tennessee are. The people in Tennessee already had to deal with the federal government implementing policies destroying the domestic tobacco industry. Btw this just means foreign farmers reap the profits. The federal government made the input costs to tobacco prohibitively expensive through taxes and regulations. They then converted mostly to grass fed cattle farms. Now there are multiple aspects that make it difficult to be profitable. It’s really painful to watch. 2008 also had a pretty large impact for farmers losing their farms, followed bu drugs, increased taxes, etc make it pretty difficult. All the farmers complain around me about “getting good help”.
  • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Destroying tobacco? Wasn't $2B subsidies over the last decade, enough to keep it going?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      The government is fully capable of doing two dumb things at the same time.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > All the farmers complain around me about “getting good help”. I assume this is due to the low pay to quality of life ratio offered by farming jobs.
    • lettergram 5y ago
      Getting people drug addicted removes potential help and illegal immigration drives down prices
      • dodobirdlord 5y ago
• zwieback 5y ago
  Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice.
  • CreepGin 5y ago
    > Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice. When money is of no concern to you, sure. But reality is many people can't even afford to buy organic foods.
    • philipkglass 5y ago
      Food in general was more expensive before the Green Revolution, back when food usually was organic and came from small farms. Here's a 1922 document showing American retail prices of food from 1913 to 1920: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_0300_1922.pdf https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl... Take a look at eggs, for example (page 21 as numbered in scans, 27 in the PDF). In 1920 egg prices fluctuated between $0.528 and $0.924 per dozen. Adjusting that price by consumer price index, it's something like $7.02 to $12.29 per dozen in current dollars. Back then people were forced to produce their own food, spend a larger portion of their income on food, or simply go without. Poverty that would force someone to eat cheap eggs now would force them to eat no eggs back then.
      • DougWebb 5y ago
        I just looked up the eggs I buy: Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs through Amazon Fresh. Currently $7/dz. They come with a url and farm id code you can use to see a live web cam of the hens that laid the eggs in the pack you're holding.
  • mkoubaa 5y ago
    Consumers can throw less food in the trash and they'd be able to afford more
• mitchell_h 5y ago
  fellow small farmer(live stock only) with a day gig. The only benefit to having a small farm these days is it provides a tax shelter, and an enjoyable(yet difficult) hobby. Even if you outright own the land, by the time you figure in maintenance and equipment on any cattle farm under 500-1000 head of cattle you simply can't turn a profit in a meaningful way. What you CAN do is use it as a tax shelter where you sorta break even if you squint and hope.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    Why is all the pasture raised, permaculture, organic blah blah stuff all so expensive if it’s not profitable? If I’m paying $12 for a dozen eggs when I can get non-sustainable, conventionally raised eggs from some megacorp for $3 then where is all the money going? Any consumer paying $12 for eggs certainly wouldn’t mind $13, which could then be profit.
    • cinntaile 5y ago
      $12 dollars for 12 eggs? The goose is dead but the hen is still going strong.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      Holy christ. If I could $12/dozen for my eggs I'd start raising chickens again! Where are you buying those?
      • phillypham 5y ago
        At Seattle and NYC farmers markets, I regularly pay $12 a dozen. The eggs are often sold out, so others are, too.
        • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
          Must be nice. The main cost input to eggs is chicken feed. Assume a $15 bag will keep a dozen hens fed for a month, that's about 240 eggs (assuming 2 eggs per hen every 3 days) at a cost of $15 so about $0.06 per egg. Cost will drop significantly if chickens are kept on pasture and the labor inputs for a flock of a few dozen are minimal. It may not be enough to live on but for a hobby, it's pretty much free money. Although I assume the market charges a stall fee that will eat into profits, but still...
• poulsbohemian 5y ago
  Can you talk more about this? As a consumer I generally see these two as almost mutually exclusive. What I mean is - while I know there is rent seeking on the part of Big AG, as a consumer I'm under the impression there are plenty of sectors where small-scale producers can be profitable. Meat comes to mind, as I buy directly from ranchers I know personally. Small-scale creameries have definitely been squeezed by rules written by Big AG, but then again some of those have had legitimacy IE: healthy and safety.
• loudmax 5y ago
  > Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag. If government were out of the picture would small-scale farmers be better able to compete with Big Ag? If you were making policy, what would you have government do instead?
  • voakbasda 5y ago
    Break up all large corporations. Sure, start with Big Ag, but we need to dismantle Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil, etc. etc. End the anti-trust run by dismantling Big Government.
    • CountSessine 5y ago
      Do you break up large foreign corporations? Samsung? Sony? NEC? Philips? BASF? Volkswagen? Oppo? How do you do that? Or do you let small US companies duke it out with foreign giants, without the benefit of scaled efficiency?
      • relaxing 5y ago
        Tariffs, obviously.
  • after_care 5y ago
    1. Simplify the tax code for farms under a certain size. Farms basically require itemization for every expense. 2. Right to repair. Seriously, they cannot repair their own equipment. 3. Add legal protections against GMO companies. Or other large private companies. More than a few small farms have be buried in legal bills. 4. Stop putting corn ethanal in gas. Its a poor use of fresh water. It’s provided almost universally by large farms. It reduces the quality of gas. We are much less dependent on foreign energy than when this was put in place. I guess this one will mostly sort itself out with electrification. 5. Universal healthcare. Or affordable healthcare for small businesses in general. Farming is very accident prone work. 6. Put stricter health regulations on animal husbandry. Big ag animal farms are some of the least sanitary work environments in the US, I’d rather shovel coal. Edit: Bonus, consider loosening drone regulations for rural areas. They are valuable surveying tools, and line of sight requirements is unnecessary in many agri situations
• kurthr 5y ago
  I'm not sure the government is actively killing it... they just aren't doing anything about the oligopolies and collusion that have always developed in these sort of situations. That may seem subtle, but many argue that we want to make the government do less to "keep them off our backs". Well, guess what these are the consequences. These markets may be "free", but they are not efficient, in fact they are arguably corrupt. The economists have also figured out what side their bread is buttered on.
  • aksss 5y ago
    How is big ag not representing an efficient market compared to thousands of small disconnected farms? In this sense thinking about efficiency being a measure of how open and accessible information is concerning said market. I can think of a few different pro/con angles to the assertion. Curious what's on your mind.
    • kurthr 5y ago
      Big Ag in this case is meat packing. Perhaps you're referring to the largest cattle ranches as well? Demonstrably, profits are going only to the middle men while farmers margins are squeezing to 0 driving them out of business... that will eventually raise actual supply prices once only the largest few "most efficient" ranchers left, but then those prices will be entirely passed on to consumers not the processors/middle men. So supply prices rise as production falls... to the monopoly maximum marginal profit extracted from the consumer, just as predicted!
  • sanp 5y ago
    And it's many of the same constituents (i.e., farmers in red states) voting for the party of "small government".
    • lettergram 5y ago
      The federal government sets the higher and higher standards for butchers. It’s not the smaller local governments causing the issue.
  • 5y ago
• themitigating 5y ago
  So do you want more regulation?
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Move to Portland, Oregon! There is a huge market here for local farm produce and livestock. During the 2000's, I couldn't find a CSA because all local farms were selling nearly everything to restaurants. In terms of meat production, it is a trend here for gyms to pool resources and purchase entire cows / pigs / lamb. The farm where I (used to) get my milk was 5 miles from my house (I switched off cowmilk)[0], but my poultry and pork and grown and butchered right next to it on another small farm.[1] There are many others, but they are far away [2], [3]. Now I pay 2x-3x for meat compared to the local big-market (or Whole Foods), but meat is supposed to be expensive if raised humanely and sustainably, so I'm OK with that. Plus I like meeting my chickens before eating them. "Portlandia" was not far off. [0]: http://www.schochdairy.com/ http://www.schochdairy.com/ [1]: https://www.marionacres.com/ https://www.marionacres.com/ [2]: https://friendsoffamilyfarmers.org/opn/soggy-feet-enterprises-scappoose/ https://friendsoffamilyfarmers.org/opn/soggy-feet-enterprise... [3]: https://www.kookoolanfarms.com/ https://www.kookoolanfarms.com/ This is the place for small farmers.
• lkrubner 5y ago
  My friend Kathryn Bertoni used to be a farmer, and she survived for awhile by selling the produce via a CSA and various farmers markets, but in the end, she couldn't make a go of it. She wrote a great review of the book 'Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm" which you can read here: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/family-farms-are-doomed-buy-why https://demodexio.substack.com/p/family-farms-are-doomed-buy...
• zmix 5y ago
  It's interesting to note, how all these "Competition is Good for the Business(tm)" folks, in reality, do not want any competition, at all.
  • ryathal 5y ago
    Competition is good for business, but a lot of big companies have learned that it's better to compete at filling out paperwork the best rather than the best product.
• goostavos 5y ago
  Are farms which sell directly to end consumers profitable at all? Like as a lifestyle business? Last year I purchased a 1/4 beef directly from a local farm and, as a life long city dwelling techbro, found the whole experience awesome. As dumb as it is, I really liked feeling 'closer' to where my food came from. I know the farm, the people who run it, the age and hanging weight of the beef, where it was processed, and so on. I even like that you get everything, including the generally 'undesirable' cuts, because you're processing an entire cow. I haven't purchased beef from a store in almost a year at this point! I've been enamored with it ever since. On the techbro side, I wonder if there's something more small farms can do "local beef as a service" wise. The process, at least with the farm I went through, was clunky and manual to say the least (especially when doing it for my first time).
  • relaxing 5y ago
    > Are farms which sell directly to end consumers profitable at all? Like as a lifestyle business? It varies, but the range is generally between “no, someone’s working a job outside the farm to make ends meet” and “margins slim enough that one small disaster means no longer being able to cover expenses.”