Future of small farms

[Miss Kay]

My husband and I both came from huge families raised on small farms. We are the only ones today that has carried on the tradition in either family and none of our parents grandchildren are. We milk our own cows, raise a garden, can, cook, make cheese, etc. but the younger generation has no clue how to do most of what we knew from growing up. I see lots of folks on this web site that want to buy small farms but the price of land and the inability to make a living on that land is prohibitive. It makes me wonder what our country will look like once we are all gone with so few to carry on. I guess times change and maybe it really doesn't matter but I can't help but think we are losing something precious and important.

[farmerDale]

I hear you loud and clear. I am 37 years old, but was raised like it was the 1940's. Today, I operate a relatively large farm, but we still raise most of our food the old way. Most farms now a days, just raise a commodity.

I know what you mean about the future loss of the old ways. I like sharing with my kids all about raising animals, gardens, how to hunt game, how to trap animals etc. My wife shares with them the preserving side of things, the sewing, the craftiness.

I can only hope my kids maintain this philosophy, but I am not holding my breath. For them to each eventually find someone who was raised in this fashion: the chance is slim to none. Even marrying a farm kid these days is no guarantee, as so much of this stuff was lost in the 60's, and so most farm kids are about as active outdoors as their city peers are.

It is sad, and I have no idea where it will take us. I personally worry that our hatcheries, our meat cutters, our suppliers of specialty goods, will fade away, as it makes little sense for them to serve a handful of farmers who are old school. We in western Canada already are so very limited in our hatcheries as an example: The bird variety is VERY limited. They now serve a huge area vs. in the olden days where they only needed a small little area to meet their business needs.

I dunno, I am with you on this... It is sad.

[Oldcountryboy]

Around here it's almost impossible to afford a small farm to raise livestock only for yourself. The cost of feed will make that beef or pork more costly then buying the same amount of meat from the grocers. Only difference is you know it will be tastier. But when I was growing up you raised your own to save money, not flavor. You can't do that anymore. If you want to save money you will have to have a operation big enough to buy feed by the ton and not by the 50 # sack. By the sack will cause you to go broke.

[hurryiml8]

The fact that I want my kids to know that way of life is one of my motivations. We just have a couple of acres, but we have dairy goats, rabbits, chickens, and a garden. DH hunts for meat too. I have become spoiled to fresh food and have found that grocery store food doesn't taste right anymore. I have found that lots of people think it's nasty to drink goat milk or eat rabbits. Oh, well, guess they won't be bugging us for some.

[PrettyPaisley]

Originally Posted by hurryiml8

The fact that I want my kids to know that way of life is one of my motivations. We just have a couple of acres, but we have dairy goats, rabbits, chickens, and a garden. DH hunts for meat too. I have become spoiled to fresh food and have found that grocery store food doesn't taste right anymore. I have found that lots of people think it's nasty to drink goat milk or eat rabbits. Oh, well, guess they won't be bugging us for some.

Ditto-100% !

We had a dinner tonight of grass fed beef, sweet potato casserole and broccole from the stand up the street (because I messed up the winter garden!), purple hull peas from our summer garden, and mashed potatoes. I don't have any idea how to make brown gravy (I used the drippings to cook the mushrooms in and from what I was told I was supposed to use those for brown gravy...) and the gravy mix I used was awful! Some overpriced "organic" processed crap ... it was the only thing on the table I couldn't stand to eat! Oh..and cornbread. It was good.

[Michael W. Smith]

I know exactly what you mean.

When I was a kid, there were at least 4 local farms that were in the dairy business all within 3 miles from where I grew up. All of them had milk cows.
Several of them I bought milk from them right from the bulk tank - fresh, raw milk.

Today, only one of those has milk cows. And I don't know how he even stays in business.

One of those farms, once the farmer sold the cows, the barn ended up falling down. The last time I went past, you would never know there was a barn there.

The other two barns are still standing, the one farmer raises a few beef cattle and the other farmer has no animals at all.

Where I live now, 30 years ago it's the same story. 4 dairy farms all within 3 miles of my house.
The one quit farming probably 31 years ago.
The other one quit farming about 15 years ago and started raising a few beef cattle.
The one I bought milk from quit about 2 years ago, so I had to go to the only dairy farm still with cows. I buy my milk from the bulk tank for $2.00 / gallon.

But I wonder how long that will last. The farmer is in his 50's and out of his 3 sons, only 1 lives with him, but he works with me in a manufacturing facility. I'm quite certain that son isn't going to continue farming once his Dad quits.

My wife inherited a farm that has been in her family for 120 years. The barn still stands and the one dairy farmer that quit raising dairy cows still rents our land for crops - soybean, corn, hay. I have a few goats and chickens, but I'm not mechanically handy, so me becoming a farmer would mean a business disaster.

I hope my son gets a job around here and wants to live here. I would like the farm to go to him. (He isn't the farmer type either, but I hope he loves this farm and land the way I do and keeps it as is.)

[elkhound]

i think small farms and homesteads and permaculture and food forest set-ups are the future.

[Peggy]

wish I could afford several acres! It seems people are getting tired of the CRAP that the groceries store are selling. I am getting the processed food out of my diet, although my DH and DD still love the factory processed junk. I can a lot more food than I did a year ago. I take classes (when I find them) pertaining to anything "old school". ex: winemaking, canning, growing wild food, soap making, natural cleaners, raising bees. things people did 100 years ago.

[Highland]

I have a snall dairy farm -- milking 30 cows-- When i quit it will be a farm no more.I have no one to take it over. Every year I see the big farms getting bigger.The biggset problem I see with the smaller farms like mine-- is we are getting old and the next generation does not want to be tied down 7 days a week.

[FarmboyBill]

Its kinda funny, as well as sad. After reading alla these posts, I thought that, if it was 1870, and you were all Indians, and the big farms were white people, and learning classes, and knowing stuff, and that the youngsters wernt made of the same stuff as the olders, the sentiments would be bout the same.

[hippygirl]

When DH and I got married in 1982, there were still a lot of small farms in this area, two dairies, a HUGE farmer's market (a "real" farmer's market, not some tiny little hole in the wall selling everything BUT vegetables/fruits), and there seemed to be a feed/seed on every other corner (exaggeration, I know, but you get my drift).

By the early-mid 90's, it was all gone. The farms and dairies turned over to beef production (there's a LOT of beef around here...you'd think it was Texas!), the farmer's market got smaller and smaller until it was sold and turned into a flea market, and other than TSC (and I only include them because they sell "some" farm supplies), there are only two feed/seeds locally (next nearest is 30 miles away).

Unless something happens to throw a wrench in the food supply chain, I don't see farming on a small scale lasting more than another generation or two. Oh, there'll be a few here and there, and perhaps more in other areas, but around here? Nope.

[CountryWannabe]

When I was a child living in England, even though we lived in the city, there were lots of small farms dotted around the outskirts. There was a HUGE market every Saturday where the farmers would bring produce, meat and farm made goods. That is where we did our shopping. My brother tells me that it disappeared years ago, and that most of the small farms are gone too. I know that a massive pig farm and processor bought up a lot of them.

When we moved to Wagoner we were surrounded by small farmers, most of whom raised small numbers of cattle and hay. As the farmers got older and their children moved out (who wants to work 24/7?) the farms disappeared and either MacMansions with 5 acre lawns or small housing divisions started up.

My daughter and her husband have 12 acres, but they sold all their animals recently. Not sure that they really want to replace them. Son in law is a trucker, and not having the animals allows my daughter to travel with him periodically. My one grand daughter seems interested in small farming, but time will tell.

Mary

[Jennifer L.]

Well, grass fed beef is becoming more popular. I think people who are concerned with their health, who happen to have money are interested in buying this kind of thing. So there's a niche for people who raise small amounts to get some decent income this way. It's not like "feeding the people", though, like I felt I did for 30 years with milking. I know I supplied 50 families with dairy product every year I milked, and I felt good about that. I may supply that many with meat these days, but I don't get a lot of money from shipping a cow to auction (although prices were better this year). You need to find the rich folk who will fork over $6-8-10 a pound for the whole cow with the "naturally raised, pastured, organic, massaged every Tuesday" beef for those people. And then small farms will be money making again.

But, yeah, it sure isn't like the old days. Where I am, there were 20 small dairy farms on this 6000 acre point of land and on the road going back to the main road. All of those farms are gone now. I was the last dairy of those 20 and my milkers went five years ago. I have a neighbor who went into beef after he sold the dairy, and he and I were the two with cattle left until a year or so ago when three other non-farmers decided they were going to raise beef. Two are the E-I-E-I-O type, one is pretty serious. So there are five beef farms where there used to be 20 dairies. And I have another neighbor who is interested in farming now. His reason? He thinks we're heading for an economic collapse and wants to be prepared.

So there are people out there who are willing to start small farms again. Whether they keep it up, who knows. I sometimes think the only reason I keep going with cows is because I don't know any better.

[ET1 SS]

Around here there are new farms starting-up every year. New Farmer's Markets open every year.

I am member of our regional Organic Certifying agency. I just read where in the past year we placed 82 Journeymen farmers onto farms. [In their phraseology this means new farmers with 2 to 4 years of experience being placed into Farm Manager positions]

[Steve in PA]

When my 2x-great-grandfather got off the boat he went to work in the mines because that's really all that was available to an uneducated Irish immigrant. They were the "Mexicans" of that time period. They were hated and feared by the established population in many of the same ways.

Him and his bride had 15 children. All of the boys worked in the mines as well, but only one of them invested his money in a farm.

That one son worked the mines AND the farm. We have a few pictures of his farm mules attached to equipment. The mules are scraggly starved looking beasts because the mines worked them until near death and would dispose of them by killing them when they no longer were worth keeping alive. My great GF was allowed to take them and he made them an asset on his farm.

When the mine strikes came, according to family lore, all the brothers who drank and gambled their money away expected my GGF to proved them food and lodging since they were evicted from their company town homes. If you read about the "Molly McGuires" the other brothers were involved with that.

My GGF told them "no" and it caused the first major rift in the family. Over time, my GGF was the only one to stay in the area.

WWII was when my grand father and his brothers got to see the world since they were all in the army. When they returned, none of them wanted to be farmers and they all took jobs in the booming factories.

Eventually my GGF's farm was sold. Sadly it's a housing development now.

I'm sure there's many similar stories as it seems once that WWII/Korea generation got off the farm they had no interest in returning. Especially when there were good paying steady jobs with set hours.

[FarmboyBill]

It happened in WW1 too. Matter of fact, they wrote a song about it.

[geo in mi]

Taken as a whole, these charts show a pretty bright future for small farming......

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-product...rm-income.aspx

Of course, those on the bottom aren't doing so well, being undercapatilized and lacking on site labor(everybody's in town working...)

geo

[wogglebug]

One of the big killers of the country way of life was credit.

Way back, people would try to only take credit on a mortgage. That might be a farm, a home; or it was undesirable but sometimes necessary to get year-to-year operating capital secured by a mortgage on your crop, or a fixed number of livestock. They realised full well the dangers of credit, and the way people on consumer credit would come up "a day late and a dollar short" month after month until they got court orders against them and lost everything.

When consumer credit became a way of life, people's personal cost-structures changed. As preppers, we know the evils of interest. However, back in the late 1950's and early 1960's finance companies were pushing the "you deserve" barrow while hiding the disadvantages of credit. Workers wanted more, and they wanted it right now! they took out credit so they could take temporary possession of goods and services they had neither earned nor paid for. Suppliers of goods and services found it necessary to pay their workers much more, so the workers could waste their income on the dead interest of hire purchase, consumer credit, and credit cards. Providers of services, like doctors, dentists, mechanics, plumbers started using consumer and business credit as well, bankruptcies increased, costs increased, they found they were being charged more, and hence "had to" charge more in turn.

The small family farm used to provide a lot of what the farm family needed, with chickens, vegetable garden, milch cow, occasional beef and more common smaller meat animals (sheep, goat, pig), hunting and fishing, maybe even grind your own flour but at least preserve, cook from scratch, make your own clothes. Off-farm purchases used to be minimal: footwear, fabrics, doctor, dentist, herbs and spices and some foods and clothes. Frugality. Old-fashioned, even Biblical, virtues. Make and mend, patch and darn, use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.

Then cost structures changed because of readily available credit, the off-farm purchases cost much more, even the farm family members started wanted things they'd have to buy on credit. The farm income needed to rise, but it couldn't rise as much as costs, so the small family farms started going out of business.Consolidation was touted, farms grew huge, banks insisted on the farmer doing things the bank's way rather than the farm and land's way. That meant high volume, high cost, low profit margins for the farmer but big interest income for the financiers. The farmers no longer had the available time to "live off the land" to reduce their personal costs.

Subsistence farming, homesteading, hobby farming, smallholding are still viable for everything you can keep within your own boundaries. However, stepping outside, anything you need to buy rather than barter, and in particular medical and dental care, have the capability to ruin your budget. It SHOULD be possible to make it work, but I can't see how individuals could do it; and I darned sure can't see politicians with their hands in the bankers pockets and their snouts in the big business troughs, setting out to take the whole society back to rational behaviour.

[sammyd]

I wouldn't automatically equate organic with small. Organic valley was mulling over the option of setting minimum cow limits a couple of years ago. Horizon has a 500+ cow dairy on the other side of town.

[rambler]

What is 'a small farm' these days?

Can anyone define it?

Is it a 5 acre or smaller garden?

Is it under 500 acres of row crops? 40 acres?

Is it a livestock ranch with less than 1000 acres? 20 head?

What does a small farm mean to you?

Paul