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What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

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Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#71

Post by tptacek »

knughit wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that small-scale farming can regain its position of a significant contributor to the food production. And even if it could, I'm not sure that it should. Food production scales up nicely, and it has many other potential benefits than just being cheaper. Say we fixed incentives that promote low-quality food (we have to do it either way, since small farmers are as much incentivized to sell crap as big ones…

Why do you assume a random DuPont agriculturalist, who pushes papers all day, understands food better than a professional farmer our their in the empirical field?

Why do you assume that professional farmers out in their empirical fields aren't intensively trained in much the same manner as the employees of Dupont? People get degrees in agriculture.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#72

Post by tptacek »

SwellJoe wrote: post #37
rahimnathwani wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.)" Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).

The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…

Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#73

Post by bryanlarsen »

mikestew wrote: post #15

Ten acres? Has anyone ever made a living off ten acres? Where I come from (Midwestern U. S.), that's a hobby farm. And that assumes the person running the place is even a decent business person. Some won't succeed whether they own ten acres or a nail salon.

Ten acres is just a big garden, not a farm.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#74

Post by tptacek »

SwellJoe wrote: post #7
TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

Duh. Do these people just forget about the principle of economies of scale? How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? I can understand if you're doing a small farm 'for fun', but don't understand how an otherwise intelligent person can think they can (or should be able to) make good money from it. > As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly need…

I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market. While there is a minimum viable farm size (given the need for modern machinery to automate the process), most likely, it probably isn't nearly as large as what our current set of incentives enforces.…

Can you provide more support for the argument that "mega-store purchasing policies" make farm co-ops a "moot point"? It looks like even Whole Foods, one of the largest mega-suppliers of produce in the US, readily sources from co-ops.

A bigger possible reason farms tend not to join co-ops is that they integrate vertically and do direct marketing both to chains like WF and to farmers markets and, particularly, restaurants. For vegetables, there are a lot of farms like this in the Midwest.

Obviously, if you're growing soy or corn or wheat, it's a different story. But I think nobody is particularly surprised that you can't readily make a living selling crops that are standardized and bid on in commodities exchanges.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#75

Post by asuffield »

crdoconnor wrote: post #55
asuffield wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? As with so many of these things, there's this idea floating around that the factory farms must be "bad" because they are big and wealthy, and that smaller, less efficient farms must be "good" because they are small and poor. Much like with all the other cases, this idea is somewhere between confused and blatant denial of reality. Money is the u…

>If people really cared about their food coming from small, inefficient, "organic" farms then they would pay for what it really costs to produce food in that manner. The fact that people aren't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't actually care as much as they claimed. This is normal: most people will tell you they care deeply about something up until the point when you ask them to open their wallet, and th…

I believe you are making the common mistake of confusing what people really want (the desires they act on), and what they say they want. What people say they want is usually "the thing that they want to want" - it's a bit meta. You can call that "lying" if it makes you feel better, but pretty close to everybody does it.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#76

Post by CountSessine »

SwellJoe wrote: post #37
rahimnathwani wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.)" Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).

The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…

This is one of the better sourced articles on the subject I could find in a quick googling (interestingly, it comes from a libertarian think tank, which makes them interesting bed fellows with the food justice and local farms movement): http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies

This article doesn't claim that large farms are subsidized disproportionately, which is the claim you made when you said,

I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market

Are you claiming that large farms are being subsidized non-linearly? I.e. out of proportion with their size and output? That is certainly not the claim that's being made by that Cato article, and its not born out by the USDA page that the Cato article links to.

I'm surprised so many people on HN think it is even a little controversial to suggest that large farms are favored by current regulation, enough that several people are requesting references. I kinda thought it was widely known. So, that's an interesting bit of news for me.

Agriculture is subsidized - I think that much is well known. Perhaps I wasn't clear - I was asking for sources that would indicate that subsidies favour large farms. In many other places around the world, like in Europe, agricultural subsidies are perceived as helping to protect small farms.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#77

Post by crdoconnor »

asuffield wrote: post #75
crdoconnor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If people really cared about their food coming from small, inefficient, "organic" farms then they would pay for what it really costs to produce food in that manner. The fact that people aren't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't actually care as much as they claimed. This is normal: most people will tell you they care deeply about something up until the point when you ask them to open their wallet, and th…

I believe you are making the common mistake of confusing what people really want (the desires they act on), and what they say they want. What people say they want is usually "the thing that they want to want" - it's a bit meta. You can call that "lying" if it makes you feel better, but pretty close to everybody does it.

>I believe you are making the common mistake of confusing what people really want (the desires they act on), and what they say they want.

In other words drug addicts really want to be addicts. Otherwise they would have given up already.

I suppose it's a useful canard if you're trying to justify American pro-corporate agricultural policy.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#78

Post by crdoconnor »

vacri wrote: post #67
asuffield wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? As with so many of these things, there's this idea floating around that the factory farms must be "bad" because they are big and wealthy, and that smaller, less efficient farms must be "good" because they are small and poor. Much like with all the other cases, this idea is somewhere between confused and blatant denial of reality. Money is the u…

> The fact that people aren't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't actually care as much as they claimed. Or that they don't know. Supermarkets don't usually label their vegetables "BigCo" and "littleco". The problem with the 'market solves everything' approach is that it requires perfect knowledge on behalf of all parties.

Large agricultural companies lobby the most to remove food labelling laws.

IIRC they just got rid of the necessity to put country of origin on food.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#79

Post by CountSessine »

vacri wrote: post #67
asuffield wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? As with so many of these things, there's this idea floating around that the factory farms must be "bad" because they are big and wealthy, and that smaller, less efficient farms must be "good" because they are small and poor. Much like with all the other cases, this idea is somewhere between confused and blatant denial of reality. Money is the u…

> The fact that people aren't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't actually care as much as they claimed. Or that they don't know. Supermarkets don't usually label their vegetables "BigCo" and "littleco". The problem with the 'market solves everything' approach is that it requires perfect knowledge on behalf of all parties.

This is something I've often thought about with regard to organic farming.

A claim is often made that modern agriculture and growing methods can decouple food's nutrition from traditional signals of nutrition like size and colour and blemishes. I don't know how true that is, but it seems like there's a branding failure here - that we somehow need to be able to select fruit and vegetables based on which specific producers made them rather than vague and inherently porous regulations governing what can be called 'organic' or 'natural'.

Supermarkets might not like that - they'd have to better manage sales space to accommodate multiple known 'brands' of apples or oranges, but consumers would have a lot more reason to 'trust' self-interested brands of farms than they would an 'organic' commodity label. Any kind of a label that doesn't involve individual self-interested reputation but instead involves regulatory compliance is going to be gamed and ultimately ignored.

Re: What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

#80

Post by SwellJoe »

tptacek wrote: post #74
SwellJoe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market. While there is a minimum viable farm size (given the need for modern machinery to automate the process), most likely, it probably isn't nearly as large as what our current set of incentives enforces.…

Can you provide more support for the argument that "mega-store purchasing policies" make farm co-ops a "moot point"? It looks like even Whole Foods, one of the largest mega-suppliers of produce in the US, readily sources from co-ops. A bigger possible reason farms tend not to join co-ops is that they integrate vertically and do direct marketing both to chains like WF and to farmers markets and, particularly, restaura…

Whole Foods does it as a part of their "local" and "organic" brand identity, but even they don't buy from very small providers. Walmart and the major grocery chains generally do not.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can...

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-...

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