For this week's blog, we're re-posting a must-read article from the New York Times. To those of you behind the agricultural scenes, none of this is new. But with such a high-profile publication, the banter we have while packing up tents at the farmers market has entered the mainstream.
How do we appreciate our customers and supporters, those good-intentioned food-loving farmers-market patrons taking extra steps to keep it local, fresh and direct from someone whose name they know... while also confronting them with the harsh realities of a food movement they want to believe is winning? So much easier to captivate with talk of rolling green pastures, free-frolicking chickens, and the subtle superiority of a tomato picked hours prior to purchase, still wet with dew from the farm. Can we romanticize economics likewise? How do we finally begin speaking openly and honestly about our own on-farm economics, while collectively pursuing real, long-term, systemic solutions? And do so while keeping our own farms, with whatever subsidies or uneconomic sacrifices they require, afloat?
Read below and tell us what you think.
How do we appreciate our customers and supporters, those good-intentioned food-loving farmers-market patrons taking extra steps to keep it local, fresh and direct from someone whose name they know... while also confronting them with the harsh realities of a food movement they want to believe is winning? So much easier to captivate with talk of rolling green pastures, free-frolicking chickens, and the subtle superiority of a tomato picked hours prior to purchase, still wet with dew from the farm. Can we romanticize economics likewise? How do we finally begin speaking openly and honestly about our own on-farm economics, while collectively pursuing real, long-term, systemic solutions? And do so while keeping our own farms, with whatever subsidies or uneconomic sacrifices they require, afloat?
Read below and tell us what you think.
Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers
By BREN SMITH
AUG. 9, 2014 in the New York Times
"NEW HAVEN — AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a corner with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating kale and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models and profit margins, and it quickly became clear that all of us were working in the red.
The dirty secret of the food movement is that the much-celebrated small-scale farmer isn’t making a living. After the tools are put away, we head out to second and third jobs to keep our farms afloat. Ninety-one percent of all farm households rely on multiple sources of income. Health care, paying for our kids’ college, preparing for retirement? Not happening. With the overwhelming majority of American farmers operating at a loss — the median farm income was negative $1,453 in 2012 — farmers can barely keep the chickens fed and the lights on.
Others of us rely almost entirely on Department of Agriculture or foundation grants, not retail sales, to generate farm income. And young farmers, unable to afford land, are increasingly forced into neo-feudal relationships, working the fields of wealthy landowners. Little wonder themedian age for farmers and ranchers is now 56..."
By BREN SMITH
AUG. 9, 2014 in the New York Times
"NEW HAVEN — AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a corner with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating kale and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models and profit margins, and it quickly became clear that all of us were working in the red.
The dirty secret of the food movement is that the much-celebrated small-scale farmer isn’t making a living. After the tools are put away, we head out to second and third jobs to keep our farms afloat. Ninety-one percent of all farm households rely on multiple sources of income. Health care, paying for our kids’ college, preparing for retirement? Not happening. With the overwhelming majority of American farmers operating at a loss — the median farm income was negative $1,453 in 2012 — farmers can barely keep the chickens fed and the lights on.
Others of us rely almost entirely on Department of Agriculture or foundation grants, not retail sales, to generate farm income. And young farmers, unable to afford land, are increasingly forced into neo-feudal relationships, working the fields of wealthy landowners. Little wonder themedian age for farmers and ranchers is now 56..."
RSS Feed
