Serf

What is needed is more farmers such as yourself who have some vision. Most farmers believe everything that their suppliers tell them. "We'll starve if we all farm organic." "You need this chemical." "GM crops are better." "You must produce mass quantity and sell at low prices to make money."

You're absolutely right that small farms can produce more efficiently. The trick is making a profit - especially in developed countries where the average standard of living is so high.

Consumers in developed countries have also been sold on the so-called benefits of cheap food purchased from the big box stores after being processed by the so-called food companies churning out "bad nutrition in a box".

For small farms such as yours and mine to be profitable we need consumers who will pay the real cost of real food. Before they will do that they must understand that their health depends on what they eat. Most of our current health problems come from poor diet: lack of freshness, lack of nutrients that are readily available in properly grown and truly fresh produce, overabundance of empty calories from processed (cheap) foods. Our customers need to make a decision that their health is worth an extra investment in what they eat.

Finally, we need a government that does not sway every advantage to the corporate food system which causes and encourages farmers to "get big or get out" of farming. The cheaper government subsidies make poor food - the more attractive it will be, especially to those in the lower economic class.

I have raised and sold chickens and lamb, and tried a little pork, turkeys, beef, and goats. I sold at farmers markets and to a small grocery. I used rotational grazing and organic feeds (I'm in transition). Production is the easier part. Production alone is a complex system. Then there's marketing.

I'm 10 miles from a city of $100,000, so I have advantages. People have said my chickens are the best they've ever eaten, and were no match for store bought chickens. But Iowa has only 1 state inspected chicken processor in the eastern 3/4 of the state, and 1 federal inspected plant. They're in the north east. After catching a load of 300 chickens, which takes hours, it's a long trip, dangerous, (lots of coffee!!!) in the middle of the night to get their by 6 AM. And then pick them up.

But imagine going to a four hour farmers market? You must be fully loaded (freezers in a van) and fully cold (ie, in hot July afternoons when it's sweet corn season and the maximum number of customers are present). You must get their 45 minutes early or so, there's a deadline (ie. early morning/afternoon). So you need to get paid for production and for marketing and processing expenses. One location wouldn't allow meat, and vendors didn't want it, so I had to fight to get in. The best I did on a Saturday morning was 50 chickens. The best I did at another location was 20. (One farm sends the wife to one and the husband to another, more expense, more coverage.) There are other smaller farmers markets, and other days, but with fewer customers. How much do I have to make on 10 chickens to come out ahead if the market lasts 3 hours, plus a half hour early. So the key is getting enough customers for all the farmers in this kind of a system. It's a big committment for customers. I've had customers thank me for the privilege of buying my chickens, but it doesn't necessarily translate into regular sales, into, say, even 50% of their chicken consumption.

When I started there were no organic meats in Cedar Rapids, but now HyVee, Walmart, Target, etc. have them, "big organic?"

It's hard, with 2 freezers, to have handy various cuts/sizes of beef/lamb/pork/chickens. Or impossible with packed full freezers, hard to get at. That's a lot of choice! One guy here opened his own meat market here in a small town, but he's now put it up for sale.

I've had a restaurant show interest in, say, 200, 3 lb chickens per week. That's a small chicken for me, with larger processing costs (percentage). It takes infrastructure to do this, all of this, freezers, transportation (a way to haul live chickens and processed frozen chickens on the same load, or drive back the next day) (and production infrastructure). Can I go year around? Public health doesn't want me to keep them beyond 6 months. Can I keep plenty to sell, but not too many that don't sell?

One processor (8 employees) doesn't weigh the chickens, but it will cut up (thigh/leg/wing/etc.) small lots, any quantity, but not do breast fillets (and how would I sell just backs?) Customers may not have freezers to stock up, or may not cook much, or may not want a whole chickens/giblets. (The restaurant would split 3 pounders.) Another processor will (80 employees) requires about 200 chickens to split them, weigh them.

I work with 3 state regulatory systems, weighing (state and a local guy), inspection (plant/state office), freezer/mobile unit licensing (county staff/state regs). In each case I've gotten differing info from the local person vs. the state person. Many persons do not follow the correct rules, and/or do not know them.

I was first working professionally on production and marketing issues for a nonprofit, which helped, but was no substitute for experience.

CLEARLY, there are two sides to this, the profitable side, and the struggling side. Many of those here selling at farmers markets are seniors/hobbyists, not people trying to make a living to support a family. We have a long way to go.

I can work with organic co-op, CROPP/Organic Prairie, which I admire and respect, but they may not be doing chickens here anymore. They solve a lot of these problems. I can also work with NFOrganics, whom I also like and respect. They're part of OFARM, on organic pricing. There are other co-ops now maybe.

AATRA had a bad report on the profitability of CSAs a few years back.

Hard work is part of the way of life of family farming. I enjoy it. I also enjoy talking to consumers about issues, and have about five issue brochures, since I write a lot. That's part of the point of marketing.

Urban folks: Invest in a big freezer! Use/borrow a truck/van. Stock up, by appointment, right from the farm. Learn the facts about organic, grassfed meats.

Maybe we need farm co-ops, with work days. Let those urban consumers come out and experience the life style. Maybe show them where milk comes from (ie. a cows nest of milk jugs).

I have to agree with Serf. These corporations are based on a monatary, capitalistic system. In addition to, this system is based on a simple concept...... sacarcity=profit. Visit http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/ and join the Zeitgesit Movement, the 2009 event, and look into The Venus Project.

.Your remarks are most welcome here, thanks for them. I wish you would enter into a dialogue with our resident Viking apologist for the corporate farm, sigurdur....
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin

snydly

We're about to have a glut of empty commercial real estate...any chance to convert these to VF?

On the positive side: The picture behind the link looks like a plan for greening up our cities that I saw illustrated in National Wildlife magazine circa 1970.

On the negative side: The picture also looks like one in a 1970 issue of National Geographic about "gee whiz" high tech, glass domed farming of the future. It was the Jetsons! Jetsons, to paraphrase Charolette: "some food (pill)!" It also pictured a huge Colorado feedlot. The same sort of pictures were featured in a late 1960s yearbook of agriculture on the same topic. In "The Unsettling of America," Wendell Berry's chapter on the future of farming was a devastating critique of the National Geographic piece. He emphasized "control," and asked: where are all the people. Then, just over 30 years later, National Geographic (about 2003) had a big article on food. They again pictured a giant Colorado feedlot (like in "Corn King,"), but this time on Berry's side, as an expose of what's wrong with our food. Of course, they sometimes say "hog hotels," and, boy, how about (a return to the blue? no, brown) lagoon! So here it's nice and green inside the building. So too in the National Geographic piece. Cows graze on multiple levels, grazing on something green. (Soyient green?) But we've seen the horror pictures of these livestock hotels. We know that they're not grazing inside of of there. And I've smelled the stench. And we know the health impacts for workers and even neighbors.

So what would it cost to put up one of these on our farm? What kind of capital are we talking about? Let's see, where does the light come from? Free from the sun or from man made energy? So, it doesn't rain in there, so energy is used to pump in, and up, the water, or around and around.

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry just posted their article at Common Dreams, 1/5/09. They said that "Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute - and no powerful friends in the halls of government." So you disagree?

Let's see, I suppose you mean that these then come from small green companies? Or is this a megatechnology thing, technobiology, like animal factories and feedlots? Megatechnics is authoritarian technics, Lewis Mumford pointed out. Utopia sound's great until you realize that the main utopias were authoritarian. Mumford has a devastating critique of utopia and science fiction in volume 2 of "The Myth of the Machine," "The Pentagon of Power." He addressed the key issue in volume 4 of his "Renewal of Life Series," "The Conduct of Life." It's the part about "the fallacy of systems," (a version of the essay is also in Saturday Review of Literature , October 1 , 1949). Life is far from utopia, but it works. Expecting utopia to work ecologically as well as family farm agriculture, with it's ten thousand years of successful experience, is a fallacy.

But gee whiz! Look what megatechnics can do! Wonders of the world, ancient or megamodern!

A definition of "small farm" would help here. Agbiz apologist Luther Tweeten defined a small farm as one making $10,000. Then he argued that it was not a good life. And in poverty, farming is not a good life. That gets at the hobby farm question.

Surely living on a few dollars per day in "the south" is no solution. Farm prices for major commodities are far too low, bell below the cost of production most of the time. In September 2005 100% parity prices were: corn $7.02/bu.; wheat: $10.50/bu (a bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil? not any more,); cotton: $1.79/lb; rice $26/cwt; soybeans: $17.00/bu.; grain sorghum: 11:50/bu.; barley: $7.11/bu; oats: $4.17/bu.; peanuts $0.66/lb; Those are the kind of prices we had under the New Deal/Steagall amendment as and economic stimulus, and the goals were well accomplished. That's one standard for fair trade/living wage, a key decision in the implementation of these policies. Corn here locally hit $7.03/bu. on 7/3/08 (immediate, not futures market). Then hit fell to less than half of that. For a quarter century corn averaged well under $2.50. But corn is becoming cheaper to grow organically, and the premiums are on top of that. More money goes to labor and less to Monsanto. Organic farmers are the ones getting parity. They've grown 20% per year for years. But long term, they'll need price floors and supply management too.

For some strange reason, doing things to become more efficient and profitable the Monsanato way, based upon pro Monsanto science, has not been able to bring in as much profit in the end as rejecting those systems. I guess the input complex has been researching how to get more of the farm dollar, how to make profits off of farmers, more than on how to make farming profitable. The input share of the food dollar rose from 14.1% in 1910 to 19.6% in 1997 according to Stewart Smith. The farm share fell from 37.6% to 7.7%.

Farmers subsidize urban consumers, as subsidies generally don't cover the losses. We lack price floors and supply management. The U.S. tries to lose money on farm exports, even when we dominate export market share, in order to provide below cost farm commodities to the agribusiness output complex.

The Committee for Economic Development, a corporate think tank called for lowering price floors to run 1/3 of U.S. farmers off the land within 5 years, and complemented themselves for having done so. But it also dumped on foreign countries. We lost money on exports to be "competitive" by the agribusiness definition. The U.S. hemoraged wealth to provide massive multibillion dollar below cost gains to multinationals and big U.S. agribusiness. The devastation here was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pretty sight, and it has been far worse in LDCs. Naturally there is much bitterness and despair.

We need progressives on board on these issues, and well informed, accurately informed. Actually it's a few progressive leaders who started spreading falsehoods about the farm bill, a false paradigm where subsidies are the cause, and subsidy reduction/elimination the cure. But there's no evidence. The evidence shows that price floors with nffc.net are what is needed. It's Harkin/Gephardt farm bill of the 1980s and 1990s, and Harkin is the key to the door of Vilsack/Obama. Harkin knows what to do. But the Democrats may want to give the Republicans four more years of rope. Well, I guess this worthless farm bill commodity title will last five years.

But what's this nonsense about how "the US farm bill has already taken care of the 'big agra' subsidies?"

Fine.

Except to "end subsidies to big agra," if you mean commodity subsidies, will do virtually nothing for "small farmers in the South," as it won't raise market prices. That issue has been misrepresented. Subsidies compensate U.S. farmers, large and small, for massive losses. They're unfair, but not the cause of dumping. We need to restore price floors and supply management to help them, along with farm commodity reserves and price ceilings. So we need to end the de facto "subsidies" to big agra, the below cost gains they get from low market prices. These, of course, are not in the government budget.

You bring common sense to the issue, still I would raise a contrast between our ag policy and ag industry which places a high emphasis upon crop production and is very successful in producing crops. These crops are transformed into food. The grains primarily corn, wheat, and soybeans are then processed into the food products that we consume as people. Part of our health concern is the level of processed foods which we are all eating. There needs to be a stronger emphasis upon food production on the farm, that is raising end use products. The edible beans, peas, fruits, vegetables, right on down the line to the exotic spices and speciality crops which give flavor and variety to our cooking. These products are labor intense, do not respond well to mass production and of course will be more expensive as families must make their living by producing them. The infrastructure for marketing, as well as the research for enhanced production is not up on a par with that for our crops,(corn, beans, wheat) but then need to be encouraged. A radical quick switch form these crops, to "foods" would ironically leave much of the world hungry, but we ignor the basic foods at our peril.

.I am a person with great respect for the farmers of this nation, but not the agribusiness that has usurped and made almost extinct the family owned far. I do know a bit about the work involved in farming and the way most live right on the edge of profitability, dependent upon the whims of Mother Nature. I am also aware of the cooperatives that exist making your protest of the profitability of the small farmer rather suspect. Govt subsidies are rather generous to the farmer as well. I live in California's central valley, one of the most productive agricultural places on earth and, while I am no farmer myself I do know a little bit about the life and the business

I must say that the issue of global warming is not one of today's weather patterns vs. yesterday's or tomorrow's either.

The issue of genetically modified crops is one that remains contentious for several reasons. Noone knows how these crops will affect the natural strains now existent or how they will affect the consumer over the long term. The issue of ownership of seed is one that potentially keeps the farmer in bondage to the manufacturer as well. Many questions, few solutions.

Just because some predictions were rash does not mean that the next harbinger of doom is to be ignored. Read, reviewed and considered certainly.

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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin

Is the world overpopulated where you live? MOVE!

Tis the wealth that is congested, held in the hands of the few. There is more than enough to go around. There is so much wealth on this planet that no man, woman, or child should ever go to bed without a full tummy and clean water to drink. Is that too much to ask? Conflict would cease if we all lived with the motto, "No one goes to bed hungry or thisty tonight."

But alas, greed will kill us all.

debi

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars

You and araquin have touched on the problem. There are too many people on this planet for the current political, economic, religious, educational, enviromental systems to provide for, with the 7 deadly traits of humans; pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth and lust mixed in for good measure. 6.7 billion people are far too many people to even hope that there is enough good food, clean water and clothing and housing to provide for all. The poor and destitute are too far down to just rise up and the rich are not giving up a g-dd**n thing that would inconvenience them. What we are all witnessing is a correction in a species out of control in numbers and mentality. And what a lot of people are calling global warming is really the smallest of changes in the slow increase in climate change moving into another ice age(not to worry about the ice, that is still a couple of thousand years away). But in this steady increase of unstable weather the major player is the el nino/southern osillation events that will be creating more periods of flooding and droughts all over the planet and then droughts and floods in the other areas. There is a lot to understand here and I will not try to explain, but will point anyone that still has the capacity to read a book to get a copy of Mike Davis' book 'Late Victorian Holocausts' which deals with the british indian and chinese empirial holdings of the late 1700s until the early 20th century and the drought and floods that created dire consequences for those countries and the british 'corporate' attitudes that created 10s of millions of deaths through the acts of 'making money' over the welfare of the people. All the people would not be saved but all that died did not have to die and the british basically robbed both coutries blind. There is also a very good description of the workings of the el nino/southern osillation systems. There is a correction coming and it will be very ugly especially with the global news coverage that is available but it still may not be just around the corner but several decades away and the suffering and misery will not abate.

.Grind any axes much? Garbage, by definition, is anything you personally disagree with I would surmise. I have read your opposition to all things global warming and would suspect that is the reason you post such a sophomoric response.

Many are coming to the understanding that agribusiness is a very bad way to feed the world and ensure the safety of ground water, the health of our animals and thus ourselves, and the integrity of our foodstuffs vis-a-vis genetic modification of foods. A return to family owned and operated farms may not be possible any longer,but if that is the case then we are facing a whole lot more that rising temperatures.

I believe you once noted that you were a farmer, an employee of Monsanto would not exactly qualify as such ( for example).
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin

Absolutely garbage! e.g. " ..... as populations are expected to nearly double by the end of the century." How will they do that with your predictions of starvation? One should make up one's mind before writing such contradictory drivel.

"We have to be rethinking agriculture systems .... blah, blah, blah." Of course 'We' means some bureaucrat(s) should rethink our agricultural policies." Maybe the President will need to send some big armies of bureaucrats and/or soldiers to Africa, India, and Florida to save the populations.

Or 'We' could of course be this guy at say, 200K per year with a big budget, preferably with some fairly unlimited power and state guns to back him up in his conclusions and recommended policies. And maybe after Cargill or Monsanto buys him a big ranch in Texas he will be in a position to grow all kinds of food for the world on arid acreage. What blithering nonsense.

There's a lot of state level work to be done. Monsanto and others come in and gets state subsidization, saying they'll go somewhere else if they don't get it. From governors like Vilsack.