Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Introduction
Farmers are a dying breed. Not just the occupation, but the mindset.
It’s fascinating to talk to the old guys at the grain elevator, or just around the neighborhood. I grew up in a city, and so did my wife. We don’t have the experience or the knowledge that these guys do, and I doubt we ever will.
It’s even more interesting to watch multiple generations of the same farming family interact. The older crowd is frugal, hard, tough, and determined. They see what they’ve built and what they’ve done, and they look at it with pride. The younger generations, that is, the ones that stay with the family business, they seem to view their farms as just that - nothing more than a business. A tough business too, one where in order to stay competitive with your industrialized neighbors (and low wage foreign workers), you’ve got no choice but to become big, mechanized, and impersonal. The joy and satisfaction are all but removed. You might as well be stamping out widgets.
I don’t want to turn this into a lament for times past. Time marches on, and the changes that have occurred have been good in the grand scheme of things. Cheap plentiful food means fewer hungry people. I’m convinced that there is no longer hunger in this country. I feed leftovers from the local free food pantry to my pigs. That’s undeniably a good thing.
But… What has been lost?
What has been lost is the character of the American farmer. The people that build, that create, that civilize the wilderness, that value their independence and freedom above all else. The only people I know like us are over the age of 60. I don’t feel worthy to count myself as one of them, as each and every one of them is infinitely more competent than I am.
Raw economic efficiency is the way decisions are inevitably made in America. That process does not consider the effects those decisions have on the non-economic aspects of our lives and our national character. We are an economic powerhouse, with a high standard of living and influence the world over. But what’s so great about exporting culture, when culture consists of a McDonald’s in every major foreign city? McDonald’s isn’t food, it’s merely a shoddy facsimile of food. And it certainly isn’t culture. Quality, taste, and beauty are rare things in our culture, at the expense of faster, cheaper, more convenient, and less effort. That’s what our culture has become.
My wife and I have chosen to live differently. We work hard and produce nearly all of our own food. We take additional steps towards complete independence every year. We’ve dropped out of popular culture, we home-school, we’ve ditched the TV, we talk about philosophy in the evenings, we’ve decided to make up for our lack of classical education later in life. We don’t do any of this for a pat on the back or to be contrarian or rebellious, we do this because it is a lifestyle that brings us enjoyment and peace. It is also our strong belief that our family will benefit in many less tangible ways from this sort of lifestyle. From better health to more satisfying work to more confident and competent children. I have no expectations of anyone else understanding why we live the way we do, and certainly no expectations of society at large having a conversion experience and deciding to be like us. I’m not here to proselytize.
What I hope to get out of this is interesting discussion, as well as simply a place to write about what’s on my mind. If we learn something from each other, so much the better.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to Mrs Du Toit for the opportunity.
Comments
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Most welcome.
Mrs. du Toit | 9/11/2007 08:31 PM CDT -
I can relate, somewhat, to what you are saying here. I grew up in the ruins of the steel industry around Pittsburgh, PA, in the 80’s. As you can see I am still a young’un to quite a few of you here.
My dad is a pipe-fitter, my mom was a homemaker. We lived on the edge of “the country”. The whole area was post WWII developments and steel mill towns.
I am not really sure how but my parents were friends with farmers, so, I spent a good bit of time on a very small dairy farm. I that small farm grow obsolete as I grew-up. The last I heard the boys were all grown and the father was running a construction business.
When I think about where I wish my life could go, it is the farm. Not the modern mechanized corporate beasts. The old family farm. Grow most all of what you need. Make what you can not grow, and, still make enough money to buy the things you can not grow, raise, or make.
I guess I and the family are to beholden to the modern world to drop out. I am not even sure that the modern world, as a whole, is all that bad. We sure are missing some things from the old days though.
I am quite a tech geek, I shied away from the farm and toward the modern when I was younger, as I knew that way of life was passing. I wanted the good life I guess. My wife is a city girl, just beginning to learn the little I can teach her of the country ways. My step-kids are basically city folk from their mothers influence.
Not really sure what my point was with this reply, other than to let you know I can see some of what you do. I respect that you see the farmer for what he is (was?), and, your bold step to live what you feel is a good life for you and your family.
Please, write more when you can. Your’s is a point of view not often shared anymore.
Cobar | 9/12/2007 01:30 AM CDT -
AF, my dream is to do a portion of what you do. I actually enjoy my day job, and I work for myself. We homeschool our children. But I’d sure like to have 40 acres where we could have a big kitchen garden like we used to have and some land to raise a few eatin’ animals and lure in some deer & turkey.
It’s guys like you who give the rest of us hope - not even so much because we think we can do it, but just because it gives us comfort to know that you’re out there. Thank you for that.
And thank you Mrs. du Toit for giving him a bit of a podium to muse from.
Weetabix | 9/12/2007 06:01 PM CDT -
I have NO interest in running a farm.
But he’s raised a VERY good and fundamental point. Modern America has become obsessed with money for its own sake, and forgotten that there are things more important than a dollar bill.
Things that cannot be bought for dollars at all.
Mike of the Duelling Pistols | 9/12/2007 06:15 PM CDT -
I am all for acquiring the knowledge and skills of self sufficiency. I have spent a good deal of time in my 60 years doing so. Hunting ,fishing,canning,gun smithing and proficiency with firearms all the way up to crew served weapons during my USMC days in Vietnam. I’ve also worked for the CIA and Wall Street.
But the lacuna in the isolation self sufficiency mantra is that it cannot produce the levels of productivity needed for a nation to become great. They’re wonderful traits, but the Industrial Revolution came along and made life better for everyone ... division of labor on scales of economy type stuff. Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.That’s why the US out produces everyone in the world on gross and per capita basis. We couldn’t do that living the thread defined lifestyle. The farmers can’t do it either. Their subsidies from the government are never enough but are available and readily utilized..
I tip my hat to the farmers but also to my family, and those like it, who have fought in every major war in this countries history since the Revolution, without having done so the farmer would most likely be on a collective.
We all have to pull the wagon.
Habu | 9/13/2007 08:02 AM CDT -
I don’t think anyone would question the benefits of the economies of scale or our shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, however…
It should not be the bureaucracy of government regulation that prevents a single family farm from being profitable (or sustainable). It should be their own efficiency, marketing and the free market that determines that.
Mrs. du Toit | 9/13/2007 08:52 AM CDT -
Sometimes, when I order up supplies, I joke with the salesman- “Blankity blank Co, you’ve heard of us, we’re the last guys in America that actually MAKE anything anymore” But ya know, there is a grain of truth to that. How many in out society have the pleasure of growing, building, creating? We seem to have become a nation of service industry workers- from burger flippers to psychologists, pizza deliverers to attorneys, there are HUGE segments of society that have no experience with building ANYTHING. We don’t even have shop classes in high school anymore.
The endless advertising mantra “new and improved” has worked- recent surveys show durability as not even on the radar for folk buying new goods- why bother, when you are going to throw it away and replace it in two years anyway? The same thing seems to apply to our heritage and folk wisdom- tossed.
Just as our landscape is being covered in suburban tract homes, our sense of identity is being shifted to the city, helped along by the city-centric media. How rare to ever see a movie or TV show that portrays the country in any light but the “gap toothed hillbilly home”.
Yesterday i went to a very upscale suburb of Seattle on business and was talking with my client. She asked where I was from, I guess she heard a trace of New England. So I was telling her about the small rural town , where a kid could play in the woods and run around with a fishing pole and a .22 rifle. She was in her 50"s I guess, and she said “yeah, I think a lot of us have memories like that”. I swear there was a trace of sadness in her eyes.
Personally, I think we have one more generation and every trace of our rural heritage will be gone.
And the sense of self reliance that goes along with it.
Advice from old time Iowa farm widow
“spend all your money, do not save it”
On learning that she first had to burn though all her savings for the nursing home before any assistance would kick in.raven | 9/13/2007 09:51 AM CDT -
There’s more to farming (philpalm alluded to this) than growing #2 dent corn or hard red/soft white winter wheat. I say that meaning no disparagement to the commodity farmer, because those rolling vistas have a charm of their own, and it’s hard work.
If I could talk Mrs. Not-MiddleAged into it, I would be out scouting right now for an apple orchard to buy. Specialty crop farming (fruits, vegetables, ornamental horticulture, etc.) offers relatively lower initial capital requirements, especially in land. A 120-acre vegetable farm would be a pretty big operation, and many successful commercial orchards are a fraction of that. In addition, if you’ve the temperament for dealing with the public and access to a market, you can sell some or all your crop direct to the consumer.
If you’re then able to add value to some portion of the harvest--say in the form of apple butter, fresh cider, pies--you can make even more money.
Alas, Mrs. Not-MiddleAged is having none of it, so I tend the one tree in my back yard, and buy my fresh produce and cider locally as much as possible.
MiddleAgedKen | 9/13/2007 10:18 AM CDT -
Philpalm:
I can tell you from experience that unless you inherit land or are otherwise independently wealthy, it is virtually impossible to make enough money from a small farm to pay a mortgage and have enough money to live. There are books out there that say this is the future of agriculture and hold up examples of success, but I can tell you that there are FAR more failures than successes, even amongst people with good business plans.
Around here, I can’t think of a single small farmer that is succeeding. One is quitting due to lack of demand. One inherited their land and just now after 5 years is making just above poverty level. One does ok, but even with inheriting their land still has to work a day job. Us, we’ve basically shut down commercial farming operations and have switched to other things.
Agribusiness screws small farmers left, right, backwards, and forwards. They LIKE regulations, because the little guys can’t afford to comply. Their low price, high volume, low quality production model gets people used to cheap food, to the point that virtually everyone balks when asked to pay a small farmer’s fair price for something, even when the quality is hugely different from typical fare.
I can also tell you, speaking from experience, that people at farmers markets around here are looking for deals. On average, people want cheap junk, not expensive high quality stuff. Small farmers absolutely cannot compete on price or volume. So we’re basically shut out of the market in all but the wealthiest (or most environmentalist/liberal) areas.
American Farmer | 9/13/2007 03:26 PM CDT -
Agribusiness screws small farmers left, right, backwards, and forwards. They LIKE regulations, because the little guys can’t afford to comply.
Stencil this: Regulations, perverse incentives/unintended consequences of, one each. Who hath ears, let him use a Q-Tip.
The rest of American Farmer’s most recent post is well taken too. I did not intend to convey the message that growing specialty crops is an easy out, but rather that it is possible, whereas in a commodity crop situation it is not. In any industry, a commodity producer is a price taker and must try to be a least-cost producer. There can be only one, and there are more fun ways to run a business.
American Farmer is absolutely right that a small farmer who intends to sell direct to the consumer must have access to customers willing to pay more for genuine quality. (Before this segues into a Wal-Mart bashing party, the fact that a thing, ag product or otherwise, comes from a Mom-and-Pop operation does not in and of itself confer higher quality upon it.)
Fortunately, genuine quality can be had, and I am beginning to see stirrings of people looking to get more of their food locally, where one can talk to the producer. It won’t change quickly enough to save a lot of small operators, many of whom are pressed by rising land prices, and that’s a pity. But a lot of folks are looking at that loaf of bread and wondering whether the gluten came from China.
I’m not wealthy; I’m solidly middle class, but I’d rather forgo a new car (and the payment) and McMansion for an old paid-for car and modest brick ranch, and pay more for food I can trust and enjoy. Okay, I eat my share of Twinkies too, but you get the idea.
MiddleAgedKen | 9/13/2007 03:51 PM CDT -
A big part of the demise in both American Agriculture, and food production, has been the industrialization of those industries. Yes, our “foods” cheaper, but adulterated w. things that have no business being in it (when chemicals that I used as mutagens in the lab, are in the food supply, things have gone very wrong.) We have abandoned our instinctual, and proper, desire for “better” tasting foods (which indicates a higher level of nutrients) and replaced it w. a desire for foods which ship and store well.
Aglifter | 9/13/2007 07:29 PM CDT -
Two centuries ago, Adam Smith pointed out that as soon as a business becomes big enough, it works to get the government to kill off the small competition.
It’s a problem.
Mike of the Duelling Pistols | 9/13/2007 09:41 PM CDT -
Most of the successful small farms I’ve seen are those that have a serious edge of “amusement park” to them. You know the ones. They have “roadside stands” with branded products, offer pick-your-own flowers and cut-your-own Christmas trees, have hayrides in the fall and Easter egg hunts in the spring.
More power to them if it works. I, for one, just love the product, but once I have kids the extras will no doubt be appealling as well.
Of course, I live in California, far enough inland that it’s just a short drive to the foothills where agriculture really holds true. It’s the season for Apple Hill, for instance, a conglomeration of small apple farmers that print maps and offer (you guessed it!) “pick your own.” Come November, there will be the Mountain Mandarin Festival, where you can decide which of twenty-odd growers have the best-tasting fruit (they all have samples), and pick up your ten-pound bag— which very thoughtfully has instructions on how to obtain more.
Oh shoot. I just realized that this year’s festival isn’t going to be so great because of last winter’s freeze— citrus buds set the year before. Better pick up my bag immediately.
Anyway, I can’t see any of these enterprises surviving for long in a different part of the country— the west coast is the perfect storm of high population very near to agriculture. That is, if they don’t overbuild all of the fertile land, the idiots.
B. Durbin | 9/15/2007 06:58 PM CDT -
I was a day or so away from being born on a farm (I was, as always, impatient). My granddad farmed and his forbears had farmed in that part of Germany “forever.” I spend as much time as possible on my aunt’s farm in Alberta, and I grew up with farm kids.
Just as with the whole pioneer/cowboy mystique ... there’s a huge amount of myth and very little in the way of reality in the pining for the “family farm.”
The true family farm was a place where crops were grown to feed family and stock, and to raise said stock to feed family. Cows and pigs were not pets, they were food. Horses were a necessity to transport and to provide the motive power for crop management.
It was great to have surplus, because it could be sold to get money to buy that which could not be raised (sugar, salt, coffee, etc). The myth of an active barter system is exactly that - a myth ... it was far easier to buy and sell than find trade partners. The tinker might now be this way again for several years, so he wanted money, not live chickens.
Most farming was a hardscrabble life ... wrestling enough bounty to overcome drought, grasshoppers, etc. The prime motivation for all the advances were to make it more likely that enough crops could be raised and harvested to have that little surplus to buy the other necessities.
But primarily farming was a way of life ... the farm a place to live.
Today, the average farmer wants to make as much as (or more than) a factory worker ... while having all the control over what and how he does what he does.
Joe Harnessmaker tries to make a living creating and mending harnesses. If he doesn’t have enough business, or he’s not a good craftsman, he goes broke. Same for Fred Storekeeper and all the other small businessmen. Frank Farmer, on the other hand, has the government there to guarantee (with my tax dollars) that poor farming practices, overlarge equipmenht purchases, and gambling on crop types don’t count against him.
Heck, I have a small hobby farm where my wife and I are raising miniature horses ... subsidized by my full-time job ... and I get montky (or more often) mailings about applying for subsidies, etc. It’s not bad enough that my taxes go to subsidize Joe Farmer ... but they’re actually trolling for more teat-suckers.pete in Midland | 9/20/2007 12:31 PM CDT
