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

washingtonpost.com

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

#171

Post by icebraining »

goialoq wrote: post #125
Spooky23 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen, brother. I pay $5/gallon for a family farm to deliver milk to my house, and have been since 2006. People think that we're nuts for doing this, then they have the milk or the yogurt I make with it. It's helped my in my efforts to lose weight an improve my family's health. When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more. Instead of seekin…

> When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more. That strategy works equally well for any product, not just "better" product.

The problem is identifying the better products. Price alone doesn't work.

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

#172

Post by andyidsinga »

This is really interesting - and to put my own biased spin on it I think its not only farming.

I left my bigco desk job last summer (left == was booted out with separation package when our org got whacked). I started a small business with a former employee who is now my partner.

Its still a desk-job in a sense - I work at a desk on my computer. But that desk is nothing like a "desk job" at a big co.

In our small business, we're primarily a software company, HOWEVER, our philosophy is "this is our business; we can follow our interests and do whatever we want".

Interestingly, one of the things we're looking at is agriculture - and without putting to fine a point on it, sustainable agriculture is built in to that. So .. we're building some portfolio items that include control systems for plant care etc.

We're totally boot strapped, working off our savings and some IoT and cloud consulting gigs. Our goal, with some careful planning of our time, is to have those gigs pay for our porfolio item development which with some marketing and customer development could lead to better understanding of requirements for product development.

Re this article - I can totally imagine that some of our customers will be these small scale farmers - who need the right mix of tools (and prices) to help them operate. The tools/products for large farms are, IMHO, incompatible with their needs.

Also, for the past several years I've really been interested in small-scale malting for beers and whiskies. ..I need some small number of acres to get started ..our bent for software could be applied to malting. "our company can do whatever it wants" :)

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

#173

Post by m_coder »

ska wrote: post #21
Retric wrote: post #2

Their are no "three-acre farms," at best it's a garden. My old boss operated a 80 acre micro farm while holding down a full time job. It was a hobby that at best broke even, but he had fun. PS: They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income.

They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income. That's assuming that the product is fungible. If your market stall can generate higher margins because you are the farmer, and/or due to the type of farming, this argument isn't so clean.

I was going to say something very similar. People have a (faulty) fake radar and if you are trying to just remarket crops without raising them yourself, you better have a good sales line if the next stall over is a family selling the produce that they have grown themselves. People like to meet and support the person who is responsible for the entire process.

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

#174

Post by jcbrand »

mseebach wrote: post #142
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…

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-loca…

> The local product is typically more expensive because it's production is less efficient

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I think you're leaving out some details.

We know that other non-local products can be made cheaper because they are in localities that are lax on labor laws and environmental protection.

So the notion that it's simply about efficiency is in my opinion a bit reductionistic. As an example, to make my point... I would use a different word than "efficiency" to describe someone who uses slave-labor to push costs down.

So when buying local, at least you know which standards the producers are held to. It's the same with Bio/Organic/Free-trade products.

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

#175

Post by adrianN »

whatshisface wrote: post #157
jjoonathan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> better than the egg-inspired food product in a McGriddle. People always use this as an insult, but how cool would it be if fast/processed food providers had actually found a way to make eggs/chicken/beef/etc artificially? It's been an area of active research with decades of failed attempts to show for it. Achieving fast-food level quality would be a huge step forward.

Egg synthysizers exist and they're shaped exactly like chickens.

Now do it without a nervous system that can experience suffering

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

#176

Post by TomK32 »

nabla9 wrote: post #39

Some commentators here have difficulty of understanding how small farming can be profitable. It's relatively easy to explain. They are not selling just the product. Just like microbreweries, small farms sell for people who want more than just a beer or lettuce. They want to distinguish themselves and buy the feeling of authentic life and values. Consumer pays more for "small farm" even if the product is not any diffe…

And at the very opposite end the big retails create their own brands that sound traditional and farm-ish while the food is purely industrial.

I buy at the farmer market because it's great to know the people who produce the food I eat.

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

#178

Post by Spooky23 »

goialoq wrote: post #125
Spooky23 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen, brother. I pay $5/gallon for a family farm to deliver milk to my house, and have been since 2006. People think that we're nuts for doing this, then they have the milk or the yogurt I make with it. It's helped my in my efforts to lose weight an improve my family's health. When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more. Instead of seekin…

> When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more. That strategy works equally well for any product, not just "better" product.

In my case, I'll go for volume if satisfaction with the product isn't there.

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

#179

Post by adrianN »

jeffdavis wrote: post #162
TimothyBJacobs wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I can taste the difference.

Did you do a double blind study?

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

#180

Post by 0xbear »

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...

>> there’s no doubt

There is very much doubt about that. Stanford (IIRC) did a study and no one could tell the difference.

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