8 Things I Learned While Farming this Summer

[KurtNYC]

1. Farming is a gamble. You pay most of your expenses up front, February through April, and you don't see any revenue until maybe July. Many things can go wrong -- hail storms, drought, extreme heat, deluge of rain, insect damage, blight and the fluctuating market price for your crop(s). You are betting that you can recover all your cost AND get paid a decent wage for your time.

2. Hybrids do much better than heirlooms. Better resistance, better output. More tolerance for weather extremes. Not much of a surprise but I got to test and measure the differences first hand in several crops like potatoes and tomatoes.

3. You should sell your crop, or at least line up a customer, before you plant it. The middle of summer is no time to be looking for a buyer. The bigger the customer the less they will be paying for your crop. If you sell to McDonald's then you must lock in your price well in advance of the season. You take all the risk and must deliver what you committed to even if you have to buy it on the commodities market and then sell to them at a loss.

4. Farming shares a lot of tactics with fascism -- eugenics, mono-cultures, chemical weapons, electrified fences and tight cost controls. Agriculture was the basis for slavery and today is the basis for a schizophrenic immigration policy that allows people into the country just so that they can work well below minimum wages, in dangerous conditions with no rights and no recourse.

5. Most consumers have no idea where their food comes from and most of those don't care as long as it is cheap.

6. Every farmer competes with virtually every other farmer in the world. If you want to grow celery anywhere but Oxnard California then you have no chance of selling it at wholesale and making any money. Why? Because celery is hard as crap to grow (long season, bugs, labor, etc) and Oxnard is the best environment in the US for it. Almost every crop has a region which is much better suited to it. Georgia has onions and peanuts. The central California Valley produces most of the almonds in the world. Some orchards in the northeast have gone unpicked for years because the labor to do so alone is more than the finished product (juice, concentrate, individual fruit) coming out of China. Relatively cheap shipping is key to this equation. If fuel goes way up, local producers will have an edge but that won't happen until fuel doubles or more.

7. Every farmer is a scientist. They have to be. Testing, researching, measuring, analyzing. They know their crop(s) and everything that goes into the cost of producing them. If they don't, they don't last. They are opinionated but those strong opinions have come from years of closely studying their own methods and revising them. Much of farming is proprietary and secret.

8. Farming is only going to get tougher. Longer weather patterns. More extremes. Rising input costs. Tightening border controls and less available labor. It all adds up to making farming a bigger gamble than it has ever been.

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Nice observations. Thank you.

[Laelth]

2. Good post. Thanks. n/t

-Laelth

[Todays_Illusion]

3. As a born on a farm and former farmer, yes.

Farming is one business where you can do everything right and still lose everything to something you have no control over.
Weather, the economy, various disasters, having a crop named in a food poisoning event, etc. The crop can fail, the price can fall below costs.

A disaster is when the crop yield and price are both down.


If you have a great crop, so does everyone else.


I looked at our records after 15 years. I looks like this, every five years, but not necessarily in any kind of order.

One good profitable year
Two break even years
One money losing year
One big money losing year

You need at least one outside income to keep it going and always, always maintain a cash reserve.

[KurtNYC]

33. That was another item I learned -- that many farmers have a "day job"

[SomeGuyInEagan]

37. Spouses as well ... for family medical insurance

as well as the money needed to cover losses in farming.

[Art_from_Ark]

63. The vast majority of farmers in Japan are "part-timers"

They can't make a whole lot of money growing rice on an acre or two, so they supplement their income with outside work. I have met a couple of farmers who grow specialty crops like lotus root (their plots net them about $30,000/year, which they said was enough to last them for a year), but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. The only place in Japan where there is a significant proportion of full-time farmers is Hokkaido, where farming is facing a threat from TPP.

[Richard D]

4. Not to mention . . .

. . . farm land being converted into condos and shopping malls. You mentioned Oxnard. Whenever I drive through there it seems more farmland is being torn up for "development". Sad as it's some of the best soil anywhere on the planet.

[Vincardog]

7. The best soil anywhere on the planet? I know there are farmers here in IA who would differ.

I know you said "Some of"

[RC]

19. Ah, that's the Red River Valley in North Dakota and Canada.

It used to be a lake bottom. Glacial Lake Agassiz. Rich black top soil, unto 8 to 10 feed deep in places.

[JDPriestly]

24. You are absolutely right. Iowa has the best soil. Beautiful soil.

[Vincardog]

26. "Best farm land in the WORLD" to quote my BIL

[Tikki]

42. I will hold my Oxnard Plains strawberries to any contest from any place in Iowa..

and I will win.



Tikki

[Thor_MN]

57. Soil AND Climate. As the planet warms, Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Ontario

are going to start displacing some of current ag areas. If we were smart, we would start fixing up some of the old rail roadbeds to be able to ship the produce.

[Vincardog]

60. What is your corn yield?

[Tikki]

62. Apples and oranges, strawberries and corn…on the way up through CA Central Valley they do..

grow corn, rice and soy beans and such…

I've been to Iowa and saw lots and lots of corn growing everywhere…


Tikki

[Vincardog]

64. In IA they measure land by the CORN yield

[Tikki]

65. I totally believe that…...nice people there...

We were visiting Mankato and swung down into Iowa and had so much fun checking out all the little communities…


An Oxnard Plain Strawberry Field
As you are looking at this photo..the Pacific Ocean is right behind you...

Tikki

[mopinko]

59. farmers need to start building more soil.

you can build great soil anywhere in about 5 years pretty easily. and get paid to do it if waste management doesn't own your state legislature.
hugelkultur.
my farm is tiny, a conceit to call it one, really. except as a demonstration. which it is.

landscape waste tipping fees could replace conservation payments at are being targeted in the farm bill. hugelkultur would serve most of the same purposes environmentally.

[wiggs]

5. It's tough. We see the romantic fun side at farmer's markets. What part of the country

were you in?

[KurtNYC]

34. I'm in the Hudson Valley these days

Farming is more romanticized than ever by those who don't do it. A magazine was started this year called "Modern Farmer" which includes features like "Fashions for Farming" and lots of pictures of dew on the grass at perfectly manicured farms. Rumor is that no one on the staff of that magazine farms, not even hobby farming. It is farm based version of 'food porn' -- so I guess it is 'farm porn.'

[MadrasT]

54. I bought the first issue of that magazine.

And thought it seemed like ridiculous, romanticed useless drivel, designed to appeal to cityfolk with "Green Acres" type dreams.

"Farm porn" is a good term for it.

Not a farmer myself, but grew up in Lancaster, PA surrounded by farms and farmers, where eating a "store bought chicken" for supper was an event that came with an announcement. ("Hey Barb, this ain't bad for a store bought chicken.&quot

[RobertEarl]

6. Yep. You have been farming

Thanks for this, Kurt

[ancianita]

8. Thank you for the generally bad news. It's good for us consumers to know what our food suppliers'

issues are. I have a friend who owns a famous bar in Chicago, yet also farms GMO crops with Monsanto in Michigan. He's glad for the chemistry that allows him a fairly predictable yield and doesn't care what consumers -- or I -- think about Monsanto or GMO's. We have some hilarious exchanges. I think he's a sellout to Big Ag and he thinks I'm a stupid liberal. But he's never explained farming as well as you, either. I now think I understand him a little better.

[mcdeavitt]

9. There is a solution but like many solutions most won't hear or see the simplicity.

If you have a moment, get on the internets and search the term aquaponics . A closed system farming/food production method that produces significantly higher yield crops (even with heirloom seeds), consumes 90% less water and can be constructed out of low cost recycled materials. It is scalable from micro-farm (balcony) to large commercial ventures. Aquaponics is for the most part organic and is sustainability focused.

[Blanks]

13. ...and aquaponics produces fish.

There is also hydroponics where the necessary chemicals are added to the water.

The most common statistic that I've seen is that it uses 5% as much water, but that probably depends on the efficiency of the system.

Of course it isn't practical for all crops, but another benefit is the usage of vertical space.

[mcdeavitt]

21. Very true

The only negative I've seen in hydroponics is the accumulation of unused chemicals in the water that needs to be flushed back into the ecosystem.

I've raised as many as a hundred tilapia here in the desert of Arizona.

[Blanks]

25. Excellent.

The other positive thing about aquaponics is that it gets away from monoculture farming.

There was a point (the 80's I believe) where there was talk about diversifying your portfolio.

With aquaponics you're automatically diversified because even if your crop doesn't grow - you still have fish, or is eaten by pests - you just throw the pests into the water and the fish will eat the pests.

At least that's what I do with my goldfish. Where can I order tilapia fry by the way?

[mcdeavitt]

28. Tilapia fry

I actually found some people here in the valley (craigslist) who buy in bulk from commercial distributors (for the bulk discount) and then sell off what they don't need. 99% male population hybrid for disease resistance and rapid growth.

[jmowreader]

46. Tilapia Depot has them

Really: http://www.tilapiadepot.com

They have fry and fingerlings. Fingerlings are more robust.

[Blanks]

52. Thanks

[calimary]

38. Welcome to DU, mcdeavitt!

Glad you're here! I've looked into it - stuff you can grow in your basement provided you have the proper set-up. It's really rather fascinating!

[mcdeavitt]

41. Thanks

I've been a lurker here since the heady days before and after junior was anointed. That said with just a little education and at the risk of sounding preachy, aquaponics could be a game changer. A game changer for people interested in knowing where their food comes from, for people who care about the long term effects of GMOs, for people who care about global sustainability and myriad of other reasons. I've literally talked for hours to anybody who walks into my barbershop and is even slightly interested in the topic of aquaponics.

[Berlum]

10. Chemical weapons? WTF?

Next thing you need to grow is some common sense.

[Blanks]

14. Seriously, where do you think pesticides come from?

http://www.nrdc.org/health/kids/farm/chap1.asp

[AtheistCrusader]

20. Phosgene was used extensively in WWI to kill humans.

Now we use it to kill all sorts of insects.

[Berlum]

29. Corporations, Inc. (R)

[AtheistCrusader]

16. Thank you for admitting you know nothing about farming. We can all move on faster, and that's helpfu

[jeff47]

17. The more common term would be "pesticides". (nt)

[KurtNYC]

35. Isn't that what DDT, Agent Orange and glyphosate are?

They use drones in farming now too.

[Berlum]

45. glyphosate is an herbicide...

...but then herbicides often go hand-in-mutant-glove with the Chem-War pesticide approach to "farming"

[MuseRider]

11. It truly is a mess

with factory farms undercutting and weather extremes. Thankfully what I grow is needed right around here. I get what I need to feed my horses and goats and the hay guy gets the rest to sell. He depends on me to take care of my end and I depend on him to do his. Growing hay grass is a little more stable, everyone around here needs it but one more year like the last 3 and I will be without hay for even my own needs. Good hay pastures for miles around have been bought by the nearby city for factories. It is likely going to get very difficult for the cattle farmers.

[murielm99]

12. Right now, prices are the best they have been

ever. More people are getting into farming where they can. The number of small farmers is actually increasing. Some of this is due to ethanol.

You did not mention subsidies. Many people on DU bitch about farm subsidies without knowing anything about farming. Family farmers cannot get along without them. We are third generation family farmers. Most of our neighbors are small farmers.

I refuse to argue with anyone on DU about the topic, since most of them live in suburbs and cities.

[JDPriestly]

23. It isn't the farm subsidies in and of themselves that are the problem.

It's the fact that while farmers and supporters of farm subsidies understand how essential they are to farming, they don't want to understand that similar subsidies are just as vital to others.

Laborers need unemployment insurance and in really bad times, welfare and food stamps, just as much as farmers need farm subsidies and for similar reasons.

Don't take what you are unwilling to give to others. We all need insurance for our basic livelihood. Social Security is more of a necessity than farm subsidies. A farmer can go bankrupt and become a laborer. An elderly person has no alternative other than something like Social Security or SSI if he or she can no longer work.

[progressoid]

30. Yep.

In my hometown (very republican rural community), they love to bitch about big government spending. But nobody ever bitches about big government spending money on farm subsidies.

[eridani]

40. I consider subsidies to be insurance

--against all those lousy outcomes listed in the OP. Would like to see more percentagewise go to family farms, though.

[Jerry442]

15. Good points all. I would add...

...successful farmers know how to blend book knowledge and common sense. If you either try to do it 100% by the book or 100% by the seat of your pants, you won't have a chance.

[LWolf]

18. I had to laugh,

even though it's not all that funny, at the celery/Oxnard connection.

I had a family member, in my earlier years, that lived in a little spot just outside of Oxnard, surrounded by avocado orchards and fields growing all kinds of things, including celery. She used to send us to the closest fields after harvest to gather the leavings.

She's also the person who taught me to garden, to save seed, to pick bugs by hand, to keep chickens, to compost, to plant heirlooms. They work well on a small scale, if not commercially. Her little house on a couple of acres was loaded with fruit trees, berries, flowers, herbs, and produce. She grew enough to feed herself all year with plenty left over.

I wonder what it would be like to grow the vast majority of our food locally, on a smaller scale, in a more sustainable way. Maybe there wouldn't be any profit at all; maybe there would need to be subsidies in the form of land and equipment to make farming on a smaller scale more affordable, to make it possible to make a living farming in a healthy, sustainable way.

My neighbor across the road has 10 acres of garden; he sells much of his harvest at local farmer's markets. I don't know if he makes a profit; it's a side thing for him. It didn't buy his house or land; he bought that before he retired from his "regular" job. I think it just supplements his retirement income.

One of my colleagues at work comes from a farming family. We regularly buy crates of peaches, corn, and asparagus from them. I don't know how they make a living; it isn't from selling us crates of produce.

I've always been interested in those smaller farms that sell...memberships? Shares? Something...and ship out portions of product as they are harvested. Is it possible for a family farm to make a living that way?

[KoKo]

27. Here's a good article on CSA's. They are becoming very popular

particularly for the local Organic Farmers to have steady income.

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

[LWolf]

32. That's it!

I'm looking at local possibilities right now.

[KoKo]

43. The movement is growing in areas of the Southeast where Farmers

sold off their coastal land to Resort Beach Developers. But, a huge Conservation Movement sprung up where the remaining Farmers would lease their land to Organic and Truck Farmers to supply "Fresh from the Farm" produce to the exclusive Restaurants that sprung up due to the wealthy Resort Customers and Property Buyers.

The success of the "Food Network" with their "Chef Shows" allowed individual Chefs to tout that they were buying "Fresh from Farm" and this allowed them to get good food, publicity and the Farmers supplying them to get some nice prices for their hard work...either Organic or Non-Organic...it's allowed a Push Back for Land Preservation and those working for keeping Farmers and Resort Development in some kind of frail sync.

We buy organic from a local female organic grower who does do CSA ...but, she sells what she has left over to those of us who are "two person families" who can't handle the larger quantities of food that a larger family who buys the CSA Membership can cook, can or freeze.

It works out well for her to do this. And the produce we buy is as fresh as the CSA Boxes...but that she sells this in our local farmers market for those of us who can't cope with Bulk Buy. She has a an e-mail newsletter where she lets us know what's available every week so we can plan what we want to buy. The CSA Subscription folks fill out a list of what they want when they sign up.

It's getting to be a larger movement than we hear about out there. But, there is the Crazy Weather/Climate Change which is challenging for these small growers. Our supplier has been Droughted, Rained Out, had a Tornado and flooding. But, she keeps going...ever changing her plots of land and re-arranging the crops she grows to keep ahead of all of this.

Thanks for reading the link!

[Egalitarian Thug]

47. The small American family farm is trying to compete in a game rigged against them.

People want alternatives to McFood. The small farmers that will thrive in the future are those that invent new ways to meet that demand without participating the the company store model most are locked into now.

[JDPriestly]

22. My grandfather was a pretty successful farmer.

It took a combination of intelligence, love of work, stubbornness, self-discipline, physical strength, intuition, lots of intuitive feel for market conditions and the weather, vigilance (checking the fences every day) and plain old-fashioned good luck.

Obviously, I really loved my grandfather. Great guy.

[Warpy]

31. I've always admired farmers

Not the agribusiness guys but the guy who clings stubbornly to land handed down to him and who is making a go of coaxing our food out of the ground. I rented a huge plot one summer and turned it into a huge garden and found out I wasn't cut out to be a farmer, even small scale. Oh, I grew enough to break even on what I sold to stores and canned to get through the winter but I could barely move by the end of the summer. I know it's made easier by motorized equipment, but there's still a lot of damned hard work involved. Add even small animals and the work triples.

However, your point #4 is well taken and can partially explain why rural people are such suckers for conservatism, even when you can show them how it's strangling them slowly. The other part, of course, is comprised of the type of churches there are in rural areas, the wingnut churches headed by charismatic frauds. Those churches are the social center of large areas and provide the only social events you can take the kids to and you can bet they're preaching the gospel of the dollar instead of that sissy Jesus stuff.

[spanone]

36. k&r....

[sendero]

39. Thoughtful post..

.. a few years ago we moved to the country on a piece of land.

We immediately set out to do some semi-serious gardening. Wow, is it a LOT of work. Of course, not using chemicals adds to the work, creating compost is a lot of work but necessary, etc.

I don't mind doing it but it does make you appreciate the food you don't have to work for.

[FarCenter]

44. The economic system would be sounder if everyones income varied each year by chance

For example, everyone could be required to bet a fourth of the year's income on black or red at roulette.

This would give everyone a better feeling for the risk inherent in economic systems and instill more frugality in the population.

Urban economic systems are geared towards reducing short term risk and making the economy predictable over the near term. They do that at the risk of not solving long term problems, resulting in financial panics, economic depressions, exhaustion of environmental resources, and catastrophic collapse due to overpopulation.

[KamaAina]

48. If you want to grow celery anywhere but Oxnard California

then you have no chance of selling it at wholesale and making any money.

And if there happens to be a flood in Oxnard, what then? Since nobody else is growing any celery, celery fans are just SOL.

This actually happened one year when floods hit Salinas, which is to lettuce what Oxnard is to celery. Before long there were signs in Subway restaurants telling us that "due to recent flooding, there may not be enough lettuce available to put on your sandwich".

[KamaAina]

49. Georgia has onions and peanuts.

Specifically, the Vidalia onion, which is sweet because the soil in the two counties where it's grown has almost no sulfur. Sulfur is a key component of the chemical in onions that makes them taste sharp and makes you cry when you cut them.

To my knowledge, Georgia has no particular advantage when it comes to other types of onion.

[bvar22]

50. DURec...

Loved this post!

[libodem]

51. The farmer's wife

Was a documentary series on PBS a few years ago. Well worth the watch. Thanks for the list. It would make a most fascinating media interview. Somebody tell, Cenk.

[loudsue]

53. Thank you, Kurt. I'm going to save this for my husband to read, because he really wants to farm.

How 'bout specialty crops? Figs? Asparagus? What might sell?

[ybbor]

55. Makes me think of two of my favorite bumper stickers

Ideally on the same bumper:

No Farmers
No Food

Know Farmers
Know Food

[TomClash]

56. No. 3

is the original reason for the commodity futures market, not casino-style gambling.

No. 6 is almost completely based on containerization.

Excellent and interesting post.

[JoeyT]

58. It being a gamble can't be stressed enough.

I've watched nearly a hundred grand worth of watermelons and pumpkins rot in a field because after watering them with a pump out of a pond through months of drought, (Literally no rain at all) it decided to rain for two straight weeks. To the point you couldn't even walk into the fields to pick them, even if they were worth picking, which they weren't.

If you're in the deep deep south, okra tends to be a good bet. It usually runs around $25-$30 a bushel, sells quickly, and the only thing that appears to be able to kill an okra plant is cold. Heat won't, and drought and flooding will only hurt it if they're excessive. Pests aren't a huge problem either. As long as you keep picking it young and the heat lasts, okra will keep bearing. Be warned, however, that okra ranks third for most obnoxious crop to harvest. (Behind cotton and sugar cane.) It's spiny and deciding you're just not up to fucking with okra today isn't an option. Not picking it for a few days will end your season.

[loli phabay]

61. i have acres of raspberries, they grow good on the hard rocky ground on my mountain lot

I have not found anything else that does well on that lot, so far.

[JoeyT]

66. I tried planting some,

but we've got some sort of blight that hammers any domesticated raspberries or blackberries into the ground. It kills most of the wild ones, too. No clue what's causing it.

Have you tried blueberries? We're not on a mountain, but we are almost pure rock/sand hills here, and they thrive in it and they're cheap to care for. It's not necessary, but at most if you want them to bear really heavily you can go find a cotton mill and fill up a truck bed with cotton seed meal for thirty or forty bucks and spread it around them.

In winter, cabbage does fairly well if fertilized heavily, and mustard takes over the world, especially if you plant the larger variety hybrids like Florida Broadleaf or Tendergreens (Broadleaf mustard/spinach hybrid)