Why small farms can not feed the world anymore...

Yes, farming is hard work, but hard work should pay well and if it did more people would want to farm. IMO farming, in my eyes, is more important than a shrink(psycologist) sp? So they should be able to earn more than them. But since we let the government control our food supply in the form of subsidies and regulations they control who farms and what profit they make(which is very little unless you grease the correct palms)

If we took away the taxpayer provided subsidies to the mega farms I would be able to produce enough to make a decent living but until people realize what their tax dollars are being used for it will never happen.

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U.S. Constitution -10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Small farming/homesteading has been very good to me. It allows me to live well without transfering my labor into dollars, have a piece of it taken away by taxes and then buy the goods that I need and have a piece of that stolen by inflation and taxed again. My labor gets tranfered directly into the goods that I need, the excess gets sold for the little bit of paper money that I need.

This is the best and most profitable model for a small farmer IMO. There is a big difference between farming in order to generate paper money to pay for all your needs, and farming to fill your needs directly. Usually, whenever you can use your labor to directly fill your needs, you get the most profit and avoid all the costs associated with resale...market costs, butchering costs, Taxes, wasted/spoiled product, taxes, transportation cost, special regulatory costs, advertisement/marketing costs, taxes, inflation, etc.. At the end of it all it is a wonder that the farmer can keep any of what he has produced using that model.

Farming can be very profitable, but we have to think outside the box and understand the nature of money, profit, and economics.

This is the point lost on most farmers today. They simply strive for an income. Strive to have no income and vastly limit your out go.

Want to here something funny? More than one dairy owner in my area buys store milk. People are loony.

We are living in an orchestrated fantasy-land, as pertains to the real world, i.e., the laws of nature.

The Tower of Babel will fall again, and when it does, micro ag will be feeding what's left of the world, as richly as they are willing to put effort into it, as, perhaps, it should be.

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“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

And why not? What we call "micro ag" the rest of the world for thousands of years simply called "agriculture".

There is land to farm on available right now to everyone who wants to farm. But the problem is, a lot of it is empty. People say they want to homestead but what they want to buy is someone else's well-functioning farm, close to their job, hooked up to the grid.

Well, those things cost a lot more money than empty and barren land that you can't hook up to the grid, and then those same people shrug and say, "Well, I guess it's unaffordable."

They want their upscale city life, but they want to have it on their own homestead.

You nailed it! Our culture seems to want to bite the hand that feeds it. Farm people on a good day are thought of as unsophisticated hicks. The lack of respect and appreciation for what they do goes all the way up to full blown hate spewn at them for using GMO seeds and modern production methods. They are factory farmers, they are strip mining the soil, they are poisoning us all, ruining the earth, yada yada yada. When all they are trying to do is make a living, keep their land in good shape and pass it down to their kids, and use the methods that the scientific knowledge of today tells them are the most efficient and effective.

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Oh for a magic wand or 3 wishes.

[quote=mnn2501;6638660]No need for magic or wishes.

If you live long enough, both of those problems are going to be resolved before your very eyes.

I don't live in the Olympia area, however as an Agent, I can tell you that properties can be purchased for under $100K, some with older homes and others with manufactured homes, under 1,500 sq ft. Now, there is a listing of 10 acres with an older farm house, 1700 sq ft, for $225K, and a manufactured home of just under 1800 sq ft, on 9 acres, for $149,500. The prices are all over the map, but are based primarily on the home, not the land! The best deals are almost always the mobile home properties, especially the ones which can't be financed. Also, the homes in need of a new roof or other structural repairs.

The best prices for real estate will always be off-grid properties.

Due to our growing season, using intensive gardening methods, we can grow more than we can eat. Those friends of mine are micro-farming on about an acre of their property, producing far more than they can eat. This is accomplished from also growing perennial edibles and having a fruit orchard.

We have raised pigs, but opted not to this year. Since hunting is good here, Venison is part of our diet. In addition, we go fishing, crabbing, shrimping, harvest oysters & clams. Right now, we have chickens for their eggs. We can purchase any meats we need straight from Farmers. Our property would support pigs, miniature cattle/goats, a few sheep. I'd like to raise more pigs and have a few mini goats.

There are few out there who can farm without at least one wage earner. We are both self-employed and work from home.

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Most of the farmers I grew up near drove the best looking new trucks and had huge fancy tractors and equipment. It takes a lot more farm to live that lifestyle. Seems to me if we went simple and worked for what we actually need we could live off small amounts of land and share across properties with each other for items of interest in other skill areas. We'd have to give up a modern lifestyle of convenience and laziness and get back to working with our hands and minds.

Too funny, I was just having a conversation similar to this with a man who lives in D.C., who has no idea where his food even comes from. He was pretty certain you can't grow potatoes anywhere but Idaho and that you would have to give up all forms of herbs and spices if you wanted to live on what you grew. How would he get hummus if he couldn't go to the supermarket??

If more people used the land available to them, I think it would change the food industry in this country massively. Small family farms seem to barely be able to keep farming the next year in a bad season. There's definitely a big distinction between family farms, and a farm providing resources for a family.

Um, how DO you get hummus? I like that stuff and I have no idea how to make it or how to grow the required materials.

Chickpeas, lemon trees for lemon juice, olive trees for olive oil, sesame plants for tahini (not sure if that has other ingredients in it, or if it's just ground sesame seeds) salt and garlic.

I can grow chickpeas and garlic but that's about it. Olive oil is kind of expensive, but I suppose I could look at a recipe and see if it's much.

I do like me some hummus.

Perhaps if folks were willing to live the lifestyle of the 1890's to World War I era, small farming would be doable for many more people...

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Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea...

[quote=Ernie;6638665]Ernie,
Adding your own opinion to someones quote is considered bad form on HT.

I did not post the "Oh for a magic wand and 3 wishes" in my original post. That is your opinion or a glitch of the data system here combining content of multiple posters somehow. Just wanted to clarify that misrepresentation.

That clarified, there is sort of a "magic wand and 3 wishes" n existence today, however the majority of humanity have major fear and distaste of them all.

The "magic wands "are the increasing numbers of nations with nuclear warheads and the "3 wishes" are the human guilt free reductions of population that antibiotic resistant infections created by Nature that occur when Nature senses an overpopulation in an area and creates a epidemic that the humans spread often to pandemic levels via the current air travel technology.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

[quote=Shrek;6638891]It's bad form on any forum, and it wasn't my intent. I simply hit the quote key and began typing my own response.

Blame technology, not me.

I don't fully understand your response about the magic wands and 3 wishes though. Maybe others might, but I don't.

Shrek - as you quoted... mnn2501 added the three wishes comment first to your post.

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"Live your life, and forget your age." Norman Vincent Peale

Ernie,
My apology. Looks like the system played a quote shuffle glitch on us as it did last year when it was randomly adding user names to quotes.

After reading your post I scrolled back up to my post 3 and saw I did not post that and knew only quote change or system glitch could cause it.

Apparently you quoted post 27 and the system combined post 27 to my post 3.

Sorry if I offended you but I was concerned of the misquotation situation.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

Not offended at all.

I'm confused though ...

Do you mean to imply that technology is NOT living up to its promise of making our lives easier and facilitating clear communications?