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The same thing happens in Canada.
I have relatives that are dairy farmers in Ontario and they seem to be doing ok. There's some kind of collective in place that establishes production quotas and you have to pay for the right to produce. Maybe more commodity products could benefit from this type of planning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember that discussion. I also remember the major criticism was that a good portion of the people who are moving from tech to farming were already independently wealthy enough to bootstrap their farm into a good place. And on top of that getting to choose where their farm is located. Contrast that with a farmer who may have inherited what he has from his parents and may not be in as good a financial state, or the…
Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
Is that not a valid criticism?
There was an article on HN not long ago [1] about professionals leaving their jobs in record numbers to pursue life as a farmer, producing and living off the land. How do we reconcile on the one hand farmers by trade leaving and wannabe farmers wanting to join a farm life? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771168
Me for instance. I live on 80 acres outside Iowa City (a college town). The neighbor does the farming of half the land; he pays rent on the land and suffers the risk all himself.
So best of both worlds for me. I have my orchard, gardens, sheds, tractor (for mowing and plowing) and rural vistas. And work remotely at software for whomever, at about 10X the rate a farmer gets 'paid'.
Local farm services guy had this to say: "Used to buy truckloads of fertilizer, then the coop would buy train car loads and undercut us. So we bought a train car - they bought a train. We bought a train - they bought a barge. The margins are disappearing entirely" Almost everybody is being squeezed out by 'economies of scale'. And its going to get worse, when we start making simple foodstuffs electrically (starch, su…
Local farm services guy had this to say: "Used to buy truckloads of fertilizer, then the coop would buy train car loads and undercut us. So we bought a train car - they bought a train. We bought a train - they bought a barge. The margins are disappearing entirely" Almost everybody is being squeezed out by 'economies of scale'. And its going to get worse, when we start making simple foodstuffs electrically (starch, su…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember that discussion. I also remember the major criticism was that a good portion of the people who are moving from tech to farming were already independently wealthy enough to bootstrap their farm into a good place. And on top of that getting to choose where their farm is located. Contrast that with a farmer who may have inherited what he has from his parents and may not be in as good a financial state, or the…
Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
Q: How do we reconcile on the one hand farmers by trade leaving and wannabe farmers wanting to join a farm life?
A: "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
Maybe they have been faced with the prospect of moving to a city and working in an office.
But most of them are going to have a difficult time finding any sort of work. Agism and the stigma of being a bumpkin/luddite will absolutely work against them.