Reply #7: my impressions from the farming side [View All]

[Tumbulu]

I have spent my adult life working around and with farmers and then becoming a farmer myself. An organic one. Here are a few observation.

Most of the conventional commodity farmers in the US are old. And tired. And have not made much of any money for their entire adult lives. If it were not for the USDA payments they would all be gone. This is humiliating really for the small ones. Their kids leave the farms and no one is there to take over. Food for the last 40 years always sells below the actual cost to produce it. The average age of these farmers is 68 or roundabouts.

Organic farmers scrimped and saved and lived close to the land to get farms and establish an entire new industry. Some got big, most stayed small. Most of these folks are now in their 50's and 60's and getting tired. Especially since so much of organic farming is about doing things by hand and not using chemical tools. These farmers at least have some children that may stay in farming, but none can really take the brutally hard work of farming all the time and then driving 2-3 hours to sell at farmer's markets all day and then driving home again.

This brief story about one of my organic farmer neighbors sums up a little of the situation. This neighbor is 46 years old. He gets up at 4 am and gets to sleep at 10 pm. He employs 65 workers all who are paid over minimum wage and have health insurance provided by his farm. He and his wife and child live in a 900 square foot house built in 1880. They all work hard all the time it seems to me. And they pay everyone as fairly as they can. But still make very little money. They produce food that is truly healthy and appreciated by the people who buy it. But people still complain that organic food costs too much. What cost could be cut? And when the frequent weather related crop disasters come occur, what can they do? Prices have to go up to keep the farm solvent. They are not making even a good income yet, but still the actual costs of farming are much higher than folks in town realize. This past month there have been freezes. Their young tomato seedling are already transplanted and so they have to run the sprinklers in the middle of the night to keep them from freezing (guess who got up at 2 am to turn them on, and if you think that you just flip a switch, forget it. You do 15 minutes of preparatory stuff at the pump and then go out in the field and check to see that everything is working and get all splattered with cold water when it is freezing). The pump is powered by diesel. How much do you think it costs to power the pump now that diesel is $4.20/gal?

So, then I have concluded that for the small farmers that I know that theirs is not a labor for money. These are labors for love of the land, love of all the creatures on it and love of other people. So, maybe think about all these small farmers who have hung on to their land all these years. For once now that food prices are actually over the cost to produce, maybe for once, farming may become a more sustainable way to make a living for more sustainable kinds of farming. This may be the silver lining.

And in developing countries, their own farmers may now finally make enough money farming to stay in business as farmers. However, people need food and this is where the help needs to be directed. Help people get the food in a way that does not destroy the farmers growing the food, which is what the farm programs of our country have been doing for way too long. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a good place to get a feel for all of this.