Farming: Hard work, no pay. DU has sad.

[zeitgeist]

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/10027490390

One must gird up their loins to read this, there is constant use of the word 'veggies'.  I blanch at veggies.

Liberal_in_LA (40,492 posts)

What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living


On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot like me — in their late 20s to mid-30s, committed to organic practices, holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds. Some raise animals or tend orchards. Others, like me, grow vegetables. The farmers’ days sounded long but fulfilling, drenched in sun and dirt. The story was uplifting, a nice antidote to the constant reports of industrial ag gone wrong, of pink slime and herbicide-resistant super-weeds.


What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.


My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom: zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like beach balls.

---!

Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. I thought about the sinking ship, and never said, Well, we’re making ends meet, but we work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and pay ourselves only what we need to cover food and household expenses: $100 per week. I didn’t tell anyone how, over the course of the last three years since Ryan and I had started our farm, I’d drained most of my savings. I didn’t admit that the only thing keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means — Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker. I didn’t say that despite the improvements we made to the land— the hundreds of yards of compost we spread, the thousand dollars we spent annually on cover crop seed to increase soil fertility, every weed pulled — we gained no equity because we didn’t own the land. I didn’t say I felt like I was trying to fill a bathtub when the drain was open.

--

One afternoon, a fellow farmer came over for a visit. He asked how we were doing, and this time I told the truth. The farmer told me he’d been farming for nearly a decade and last year he made the most profit yet: $4,000. I spewed out a slurry of concerns, told the farmer how I’d done the numbers every way and the future wasn’t looking much more profitable. The farmer just nodded, as if I was telling him what I’d eaten for breakfast that morning and not revealing the shameful secret of my failing business. The more we talked the more I began to wonder about other farmers I knew.

http://www.alternet.org/food/what-nobody-told-me-about-small-farming-i-cant-make-living

There are fifty plus replies to this op but this one has to be the thread winner.

Star Member hunter (23,383 posts)
28. My parents had a farm that size.

They also had outside work.

Alas, that's all gone now, my parents moved away, and the entire area has been developed as mini ranches; little private playgrounds for wealthy people, with homeowners associations having zero tolerance for most aspects of traditional rural life.

Their horses live better than most of earth's human population, roosters or free ranging chickens are not allowed, and people have perfectly manicured toxic chemical saturated lawns.

It's one of those places where water use increased during the drought, well, because wealthy people figure it's their water and they own the political system too. Even should they be fined, which is rare, it's a trivial fine in relation to their income, not the economic catastrophe it would be to someone who is struggling to pay their bills and letting their lawns die.

If we had some sort of "national dividend," paid for by progressive income taxes and by winding down the most ludicrous aspects of the military-industrial complex, if everyone had a basic income simply for being human, then all sorts of things would be possible, including many more small organic "artisan" farms.

The average person will be creative and work, whether they need to or not. That's human nature.

Unfortunately, big money prefers wage slavery, and they own the place.

well not everyone at DU is buying in to the agarian reform meme

Codeine (15,903 posts)
37. Ten rented acres isn't a farm, dipshit.

It's a hipster garden.

A Little Weird (1,432 posts)
42. A lot of folks seem to have a romantic notion of farming

I grew up on a farm and knew at an early age that I wanted no part of it as an adult, nor does my brother. I guess we are part of the exodus from family farming. I think when you grow up with it you see the downsides much more than someone who just gets a skewed view from the way it is depicted on TV or movies.

None of the farmers I knew made a living at farming. They did full-time outside jobs and then came home and did another full-time job on the farm. Even many of the bigger farms only get by because of farm subsidies and exploiting migrant labor.

Our food system is very broken in a lot of ways.

Response to A Little Weird (Reply #42)Sat Jan 2, 2016, 03:41 PM
Star Member Kali (42,045 posts)
53. this is so true

visitors only see you taking it easy (because you have visitors!) and see everything as idyllic. they rarely show up as you are shoulder deep in a prolapsed cow or rolling around in the dirt and ants trying to change out a starter with a stripped mounting bolt.

my mother wanted out of the family place - even traded a horse for a bicycle, me growing up in town would have done the opposite. I am typical of a number of my circle - we were lucky enough to be able to return to the life and even the family place. alternation of generations is what I call it.

my sole income is from this place now and we sure as hell aren't well off, but we do have some security that others do not. I am grateful, lucky, and sometimes wanting to quit! (mechanic work)

Green Aches DU style. It is always lots of fun watching the DUmmies shovel through manure looking for a pony but farming for fun and profit?  DUmmies aren't up early enough, nor do they have the stamina, or mind set for it.  They are useless eaters nothing more. 

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Out: Green Acres

In: Green Belly Achers

[Chris_]

I'm holding out until I hear from Big Mo.

[BlueStateSaint]

Out: Green Acres

In: Green Belly Achers

More Eco-friendly bitching!

[Carl]

DUmmy,let me introduce you to a thing called real life.
It is not a field of dreams,just because you grew it does not mean anyone wants to buy it.

Learn what is a marketable crop and focus on that.
A couple of hints...flowers are not,most vegetables on their own are not.
Organic means nothing and your main crop of sweet corn (did you hear that) will amount to jack shit organically.

Stupid mooks.

[BattleHymn]

they rarely show up as you are shoulder deep in a prolapsed cow

What does the OP have to do with DUmp women???

[tanstaafl]

Liberal_in_LA (40,492 posts)

What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living

Y'know Lib in La-La, I could have told you so many things about farming. I grew up on what is today a small farm. 160 acres, quarter section. Me and my eight brothers and sister.

If you want to make a million dollars farming,





start with two million.

[I_B_Perky]

Dummies and farming?  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!   Hell most of them can't hold a regular 9-5 job, let alone farm.  Ain't no days off on a farm and it is damned hard work on the easiest day.

[AprilRazz]

Liberal_in_LA (40,492 posts)

What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living

The crop farmer across the road is doing pretty well, he is also trading stuff from his 10 acre garden to me for fresh eggs.
Of course he is on the tractor most days.

[Big Dog]

Liberal_in_LA

What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living

<snip>

My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom: zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like beach balls.

Are you ****ing kidding me? 10 acres of shit-fertilized vegetables and flowers, and watermelons you can't sell because racism?

That does not "cover the bronzed landscape". It's a big back yard. The Dummy who called it a "hipster garden" nailed it.

I bet you thought you'd make a million dollars at the Saturday morning farmers' market, DUmbass.

my partner, Ryan, and I

Fags and farming do not mix.

On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot like me — in their late 20s to mid-30s, committed to organic practices, holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds.

In other words, people who don't know rat shit from Rice Krispies about agriculture. You know, Dummy, people actually go to college to study agribusiness- not Gender Studies or Pre-Columbian Meso-American Pottery Making.

What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.

Slave driving capitalist piece of shit. And not even a successful piece of shit.

[BattleHymn]

You know, Dummy, people actually go to college to study agribusiness- not Gender Studies or Pre-Columbian Meso-American Pottery Making.

Therein lies the condescending bit. Many city folk seem to think that farmers and rural areas by default are full of know-nothing hayseeds doing work that any simpleton can do.

I guess they're finding out how wrong they are.

[Zathras]

DUmbasses and farming. The only DUmbasses I want to see farming are the ones who become good DUmbasses by assuming room temperature and buy the farm. In fact, the more that buy the farm, the better this world will be. And, to any wastes of skin, oxygen thieving reprobates that may be lurking like a cockroach under the sink? You can quote me on that at your "safe space", the hive of scum and villainy, the DUmp.

[SVPete]

  L_i_LA is so bleepingly ignorant as to believe he could make a living market-farming just 10 acres?!!!

I don't think that's been possible in my lifetime, not in CA's Central Valley, at least (BTW, I grew up there, and my Dad was a farmer ... of several hundred acres in partnership with his brother). So L_i_LA has "discovered" what has been true since the days of Truman? Or FDR? Or ...?

[Maverick1987]

...but we work 12 hour days, 6 days a week...

...the only thing keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means — Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker.

So, you're each tending farm all that time AND maintaining regular paying jobs? Are there extra hours in the day / days per week out there in BF Cali?

[Big Dog]

L_i_LA is so bleepingly ignorant as to believe he could make a living market-farming just 10 acres?!!!

I don't think that's been possible in my lifetime, not in CA's Central Valley, at least (BTW, I grew up there, and my Dad was a farmer ... of several hundred acres in partnership with his brother). So L_i_LA has "discovered" what has been true since the days of Truman? Or FDR? Or ...?

Freed slaves were given 40 acres and a mule, and that was called "subsistence farming".

This DUmmy has 1/4 the land and no mule, and wants to be friggin' ConAgra.

[98ZJUSMC]

Hmmmm........

Hard scrabble, hand-to-mouth, working from sun up to sun down, no days off, shortened, brutal lifespans, huge families, subsistence lifestyle....

.....welcome to the way the human race existed before THE EVIL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!!!!!!

None of the farmers I knew made a living at farming. They did full-time outside jobs and then came home and did another full-time job on the farm. Even many of the bigger farms only get by because of farm subsidies and exploiting migrant labor. 

Our food system is very broken in a lot of ways.

And yet, we produce over 2x's the amount of food we consume from an ever shrinking agricultural base.  Yay, America! 

We subsidized your beloved Soviet Union for decades, we ship free food to your poor, downtrodden, constantly-warring, fat tribal warlords in darkest Africa.  We shipped free food to China, the Middle East the list goes on and on......    you.

What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage?

Make a living?  You subsisted.

Here was your healthcare, numbnutz:


Here, was your labor:





You faggots can stop right here.  You'll have to import and exploit your labor.

And everyone in that picture could hunt, fish, preserve vegetables, salt and jerk beef, mid-wife a calf, shoe a horse, fix the wagon, repair the tractor, mend clothes and re-fence the back forty.  Sun up to sun down.  Know what they didn't do?





You know what else they didn't have?  Crippling fines imposed by Marxist overlords for the least and latest offense against Gaia, taxes on everything that moved or, didn't move and forcible destruction of crops to appease some green bureaucrat.

What did they have?  Self-reliance (GASP!!!), work ethic (The HORROR!!!!) and a solid family structure (RACIST!!!!!) that they could fall back on, improve upon and enjoy through the good times, the hard times, the always occurring natural disasters and bountiful harvests.

I have a rather large community of:



They seem to do just fine and no migrant labor, either.  Huh........

[98ZJUSMC]

Codeine (15,903 posts)
37. Ten rented acres isn't a farm, dipshit.

It's a hipster garden.

A cogent response.  Imagine that?

[ChuckJ]

Several months back I did some work for a real farmer. I asked him how many acres a person needed to farm to raise a family. He said that if farming was going to be your only income you could probably "get by" with around 40 or 50 acres.

[98ZJUSMC]

L_i_LA is so bleepingly ignorant as to believe he could make a living market-farming just 10 acres?!!!

I don't think that's been possible in my lifetime, not in CA's Central Valley, at least (BTW, I grew up there, and my Dad was a farmer ... of several hundred acres in partnership with his brother). So L_i_LA has "discovered" what has been true since the days of Truman? Or FDR? Or ...?

Victor Davis Hanson needs to get a hold of this thread.   

[SVPete]

In other words, people who don't know rat shit from Rice Krispies about agriculture. You know, Dummy, people actually go to college to study agribusiness- not Gender Studies or Pre-Columbian Meso-American Pottery Making.

Therein lies the condescending bit. Many city folk seem to think that farmers and rural areas by default are full of know-nothing hayseeds doing work that any simpleton can do.

I guess they're finding out how wrong they are.

But, but, that SoCal City Boy would have to attend Moo-U, aka UC Davis (The "Aggies"! Horror of horrors!). UCD has/had an elective class in Tractor Driving ... taught by an actual farmer (who has a Bachelors degree in Ag Engineering and, IIRC, a Masters in Civil Engineering)!

[SVPete]

Flipping the script a bit on these whining DU-ignorami, why in Hades do they think the food they eat - even if they buy at Whole Paycheck or Sprouts - is so CHEAP?!

[Big Dog]

That dog worked harder than the combined population of Skins' Island.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Dummies and farming?  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!   Hell most of them can't hold a regular 9-5 job, let alone farm.  Ain't no days off on a farm and it is damned hard work on the easiest day.

I'm not sure that most DUmmies could even work a 12 noon shift to 3 pm.

My dear friend's Dad worked as a postal carrier for 40 years.  And farmed before & after work.  He is approaching 80 years old. Still goes out to to do farm chores for a few hours every morning & evening.

He doesn't do it for $$, it just what he needs to do.  Called a work ethic.

[I_B_Perky]

I'm not sure that most DUmmies could even work a 12 noon shift to 3 pm.

My dear friend's Dad worked as a postal carrier for 40 years.  And farmed before & after work.  He is approaching 80 years old. Still goes out to to do farm chores for a few hours every morning & evening.

He doesn't do it for $$, it just what he needs to do.  Called a work ethic.

My granddad had a 500 acre farm when I was growing up. It was what he did after he retired. All us grand kids used to spend our summer "vacation" there.  Hardest work I ever did in my life.  August was a real bitch.  Round these part the humidity is like 80 percent in August and you got crops coming in, hay to put up, canning, etc. 

It did have some good points. Ate really well.  Homemade ice cream.  Fresh strawberries. Fresh melon.  Fresh eggs. Fresh veggies. Bread baked in a wood stove.

All in all I say it was worth it. 

Dummies think those old farmers and their wives don't know their shit... well they need to spend a summer on a farm.

[freedumb2003b]

10 Acres

It costs ADM or ConAgra about a buck a day to keep that producing about 100 times what a doper farmer can.

There is no romance in doing a job 1/100th as well as someone else that produces nothing more than good feelings.