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A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

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Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#141

Post by vogt »

clord wrote: post #112

We did this. My wife has a masters in microbio, and I worked at IBM on their C++ and for Fortran compilers for about 8 years (yay std::atomics). I still do remote contract work to help pay for upgrades to the farm. Would be nice to get one of my side-projects finished and start pumping out some income streams, but it's not a big rush anymore. I have a point of sale system built with React and Haskell that integrates…

Here's a question about adjustment to rural life, because I have been daydreaming about this for a long time: Are you now isolated from existing friends and family? That's really my one big worry.

I'm super burned out on software, and currently facing all the same concerns it sounds like you did before, it just frightens me the idea of being further removed (geographically) from the few family and friends we have left.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#142

Post by mseebach »

gamegoblin wrote: post #119
metamet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want to distinguish themselves and buy the feeling of authentic life and values. More than this, I think there is a substantial portion of consumers who aren't as much attempting to distinguish themselves as they are realizing how important their dollar vote is. Buying from a small or local farm keeps money circulating locally (ideally). When there is a community of local businesses, this becomes amplified. It…

Questions to someone with more economics knowledge than me: I understand the sentiment and intuitive reasoning behind this argument (I find myself thinking it every week when I go to the local farmers' market!), but is there evidence that "buying local" actually increases the local standard of living? And a followup: if it does increase the local standard of living, would this behavior, if duplicated in all communiti…

It only intuitively makes sense -- there are quite a few assumptions. The local product is typically more expensive because it's production is less efficient (if it wasn't, it would just compete with the non-local product at regular market conditions). Being less efficient means using more inputs per output, so what is the local farmers inputs, and -- crucially -- where are those inputs made? Is he using his not-locally-made tractor less efficiently? Is he paying a mortgage to a non-local financial institution? Is he sourcing his feed, seeds, fertilizer, fuel etc locally? And of his profit, how much of it is he spending locally?

These are difficult numbers to work out exactly, but it's not difficult to see that they have to be in a pretty thigh range for your local-premium to actually, on the net, drain resources from the community, compared to you just eating cheaper meals a bit more frequently. The main type of input that most obviously support the local community is labor, and most modern products, particularly agriculturally, are rather light on labor, so you might end up supporting one job at the farm in favor of three jobs at the diner. Especially if the farm-job is held by a "highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmer" and the diner-jobs by single moms, it's getting morally quite dubious.

But to wrap this up, local to non-local is rarely apples to apples. Just as with organic, there's probably a very substantial overlap with meeting a demand for products that are simply better (and thus more expensive), with the nominal quality (local, organic) actually being secondary.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#144

Post by coygui »

No matter how they love to work at small farm, they will be eventually replaced by machines when machine learning farming equipment becomes affordable to small farm owner. Then small farm will be one man farm.

After that, the lifestyle of supporting local farm losses the meaning.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#145

Post by mseebach »

kuschku wrote: post #139
gamegoblin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questions to someone with more economics knowledge than me: I understand the sentiment and intuitive reasoning behind this argument (I find myself thinking it every week when I go to the local farmers' market!), but is there evidence that "buying local" actually increases the local standard of living? And a followup: if it does increase the local standard of living, would this behavior, if duplicated in all communiti…

A good argument is the question what happens with the money. For example, assume Facebook replaces a local competitor. Now instead of the profit going to owners, which spend it locally, on philanthropic projects, or just high quality goods, instead it goes to Mark Zuckerberg, who spends it in the US, on US brands, and to fund US charities, in best case. If you currently live outside the US, outside SV and NYC, you’d…

You need to see a layer deeper than that. The opportunity cost of the tens of thousands of highly qualifies engineers required to build and run dozens of national/regional Facebooks rather than doing something else is absolutely huge.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#147

Post by dpc59 »

krrrh wrote: post #106
huehehue wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least a third explanation as well, which is the fact that eggs from farmer Tom down the road are likely to taste 1000x better than the egg-inspired food product in a McGriddle. I can't imagine many people are thinking "Screw local farmers, I want Tyson Chicken Nuggets!". That might be a bad example but the point is that cost is probably the bigger factor here, not politics or lifestyle or even taste.

I’m not disagreeing with the trust of your comment, but despite popular belief, McDonalds does use real eggs.[1,2] Though there’s no doubt that an egg from a chicken who has walked around, eating bits of grass and bugs, will taste better and have a better nutritional profile. [1] https://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/answer/does-your-egg-mcmu... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/27/are-mcdonalds-eggs-real-fast...

They microwave them though, eggs are good when they're cooked a in a bunch of fat with herbs and spices.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#148

Post by uxp100 »

goialoq wrote: post #118
huehehue wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least a third explanation as well, which is the fact that eggs from farmer Tom down the road are likely to taste 1000x better than the egg-inspired food product in a McGriddle. I can't imagine many people are thinking "Screw local farmers, I want Tyson Chicken Nuggets!". That might be a bad example but the point is that cost is probably the bigger factor here, not politics or lifestyle or even taste.

You are confusing a recipe that you don't like with an ingredient that you don't like.

You seem to be implying all eggs taste the same, which is not true.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#149

Post by kaybe »

earlyriser wrote: post #84
nilkn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's controversial to say that we should strive for a world and economy where people can easily afford healthy food for themselves. I already suggested that the best route is probably to avoid cows altogether for this, and I didn't say anything about pounds of meat.

I have the feeling that this is controversial because it plays with guilt feelings and people, in general, don't want to be the bad guys and rationalize bad decisions polarizing the opposite field. This is reflected in the vegan cliché.

It might go deeper. Many societies are not that far away from hunger and poverty in the past.

I can see memories of hunger and war in our collective behaviour and also shaping my family, and wealth including being able to afford to eat whatever whenever cushions that a bit. In Europe, the grandparent generation that grew up with the war and the following hunger years is still alive.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#150

Post by TimothyBJacobs »

uxp100 wrote: post #148
goialoq wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing a recipe that you don't like with an ingredient that you don't like.

You seem to be implying all eggs taste the same, which is not true.

Eh, at least one test seemed to show that there wasn't a noticeable difference: http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/08/what-are-the-best-eggs-ca...
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