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The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#111

Post by tomcam »

harshaw wrote: post #28

This farm is in Harvard MA - e.g the exurbs of Boston. Harvard is one of these communities that has large minimum lot sizes and restrictions on commercial property so it retains its rural feel. It's pretty, possibly not the best use of property in Boston these days, kinda snooty, and is certainly not a cheap place to run a family farm. A couple towns south where I live there are many active small farms. They either s…

Are they those awesome self-service milkers where the cow just walks up and gets milked automatically?

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#112

Post by SenHeng »

tlear wrote: post #100

There is a lot of discussion about prices, weather etc. but the key here is that their family died out. Being 80 and 74 and the only ones running the farm..

The young don't want to farm. My neighbour is 84, his children in their 40s and 50s. They moved to a small regional town to work in factories. Same story for the several other farmers in this area.

He has offered to let me use the land for free. I moved here for the scenic views. I don't want to farm. There's over 10,000 square metres of farm land right outside my window growing weeds as I sit here in climate controlled comfort in a HM chair, typing away.

edit: math is hard

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#113

Post by somenameforme »

photochemsyn wrote: post #67

This 17-acre farm was enough to keep about eight humans alive if it had been the sole source of agricultural production to feed them. That's the fundamental equation, and it generally assumes a vegan diet as well. Nobody has ever been able to reduce this value, it's related to the solar input and the ability of plants to capture carbon into a human-digestible energy source. It'll be worse on Mars, of course, due to t…

China has around 330 million acres of farmland and, until relatively recently, they were a net food exporter with a population of 1.4 billion. That's around 4 people fed per acre, and that's not especially remarkable. Even urban homesteads are also able to match this. Here's [1] a heavily commercialized one that is/was operating on a fifth of an acre for a family of four.

And meat also provides an excellent nutrient:calorie ratio with extremely low upkeep. You can sustain around 50 free range chickens per acre, and they're ready for harvest in 6 weeks. That's more than a whole chicken per day, on a single acre. If you want to get real crazy you can also get into things like vertical farming/aquaponics [2] and more, where the densities are limited really only by cost. Though on the still very reasonable end, you can do things like potato boxes where you can get hundreds of pounds of potatoes in tens of square feet.

[1] - https://www.urbanhomestead.org/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#114

Post by [deleted] »

photochemsyn wrote: post #67

This 17-acre farm was enough to keep about eight humans alive if it had been the sole source of agricultural production to feed them. That's the fundamental equation, and it generally assumes a vegan diet as well. Nobody has ever been able to reduce this value, it's related to the solar input and the ability of plants to capture carbon into a human-digestible energy source. It'll be worse on Mars, of course, due to t…

[deleted]

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#115

Post by checkyoursudo »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #7

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. From a personal standpoint, the sensible thing to do is to scale it down to subsistence gardening for yourself and your family. That is what my family does. I remember, when I was still young, they still used to sell some produce. Nowadays it is entirely consumed by the family or gifted out. The benefit of this, is that you are free from economic…

I like gardening and have been a very small-scale gardener my whole life, but mostly flowers and a couple of tomato and bean plants. How much space would you need for a true subsistence garden? Like a family of 4, producing all your own produce (or you know the vast majority of it, excluding that which cannot grow in your conditions), plus giving a small percentage to friends and neighbors. A quick search does not seem to be super helpful.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#116

Post by KingMachiavelli »

ghaff wrote: post #47
sokoloff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard isn't particularly close to Boston. It's 25-30 miles outside of Boston and outside of even I-495, the outer loop highway encircling Boston. (Still River, where the farm is, is on the far end of Harvard.) Article says they used to farm two fields they owned and three they leased and have backing away from some of the leased land. From a quick search (unverified/fact-checked), it looks like it's a <20 acres of…

Probably not even that expensive. I live a town or two further out. One of my neighbors has a small apple tree orchard and the other has a Christmas tree farm. It's pretty accessible to Boston for the day but not really close. My old farmhouse was the original property for about a 75 acre farm. It's been renovated but certainly not a multi-million dollar property. You can actually get out of Boston fairly quickly to…

IMO it's due go higher property taxes, the New England states have some of the highest property taxes and high taxes overall which makes land speculation expensive. CA has extremely low property taxes with a loopholes that push the average even lower

Even just a few miles outside NYC, you can get a decent house in NJ for 500K but the property taxes alone will be around 5-10K.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#117

Post by sgu999 »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #7

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. From a personal standpoint, the sensible thing to do is to scale it down to subsistence gardening for yourself and your family. That is what my family does. I remember, when I was still young, they still used to sell some produce. Nowadays it is entirely consumed by the family or gifted out. The benefit of this, is that you are free from economic…

> From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming.

I don't think this is true everywhere. It likely requires the right supply chain to work, but here in France small family farms are doing fine for instance. They have to go sell their products to local markets on top of growing them, but it's a sustainable business.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#118

Post by cujaneway »

Incipient wrote: post #69

Family grown, wholesome produce is a great product, and definitely just better than mass produced. However, as furniture, building, etc has all shown...people just want cheaper and easier. Is the family farm just a victim of our move to mass production?

The majority of people don't just want for cheaper goods, it's a necessity.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#119

Post by thworp »

mikrotikker wrote: post #79
ajmurmann wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see it being eliminated right there in the post. Globalization is moving money to the people who are more needy by giving them the chance to earn a relative fortune by harvesting apples in NZ. It's a fabulous success! We see this all over the place. Many manufacturing jobs moved from China to cheaper places where people are more needy because so many Chinese were lifted out of poverty. The best way out of poverty…

But the effects globalization has had on the environment has been disastrous

That really depends on where. If we say globalozation started in the 80s (which seems like a fair middle ground) then the environment in high income countries has recovered immensely.

In Europe since the 80s , forest coverage has grown by something like 30%, acid rain is pretty much gone, protected areas have doubled, most big rivers are safe to swim and co2 output is going down.

I think it would be great if every country had the ressources to accomplish similar things instead of deforesting because they’re poor.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#120

Post by biorach »

btilly wrote: post #32
randomdata wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. So long as there is residual value in the "hand-me-down" equipment, there will be economic value in operating it. At the same time it is not economically sensible for large scale farming to continue to operate old and outdated equipment, so the smaller scale farm actually fills a useful role in the economy.

The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things. And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society that require exchanging what you've produced for something produced by others. Like, say, the computing device that you used to post your opinion.

> The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things.

Not everyone evaluates their life choices like an arid economist.

In particular, not everyone would regard leaving an outdoor lifestyle for sitting at a desk all day at someone's beck and call an "oppirtunity"

> And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society

Actually, in many places it is possible to operate a small farm without being destitute. The point is that all the "nicities" are particularly necessary, and outside of education and healthcare you can get by ok buying second hand and mending and making do.

Heck, even the homeless have mobile phones, so your example is pretty poor

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