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

I wonder how many that left the farm, lost their "good paying jobs", alot of their retirement and other benefits that went along with their jobs, wouldn't like to have the old farms back.
I'm sure some wouldn't, we live in a day where "Manuel Labor" is somebody we don't know anymore.....doesn't matter what kind....I've heard folks say" My youngun ain't doing that".....Government doesn't even want children working at all, if the truth be known.
I asked a neighbor, that is a wheel in the energy racket,why folks were driving 4 hours to work a shut down, with so many folks around the same area. He said that the people in the areas round the jobs didn't want any job that invovled manuel labor...they wanted tech jobs and office work. I don't suppose they have figured out that there are only so many of those jobs out there
As to farming, if we are to feed the world....the farming of the last 40 years will have to change.....closer to home, simpler, more direct. Most land around here is producing meager crops at best, because the land isn't being farmed....it's being mined, and insurance farmed to death.....and nobody seems to care
Everyone one thinks we're drinking green bub-a-lub and eating rainbow stew from a everful, everlasting food dispenser
It's sad really, just the other day saw a news program, thousands of bushels of wheat stacked up, till the burlap bags were disintagrating..in India of all places...claimed there was no place to store it! There always seems to be a lot a scrawny folks over there....I imagine they've belly space enough to store such a pile a grain.....but no....it left to the rats. I suppose it's more profitable to let it spoil.
Folks better wise up, gear up, and get their lazy @#%@$ to work.....prosperity rises and falls like the tide.....there was always somebody with a farm, or land to raise food,fire, and find the necessities of life to fall back on for most folks.....That is over for a lot a families...
Family...basic building block of civilization...just like a brick wall , bricks all crumble...the mortar won't hold up the roof!
Another good reason for these smaller farms people thinks archaic....awfully good place to raise a family...better for the land that large corperate farmer sitting in a office.....
Ask the Danes and Norweigans....they say they'd starved in WWII if not for the small farmer, that could still sow and reap!

We've had good threads on here about gardening in the city, and folks can do a good job raising food on an acre or so.

We -could- have substanance farming, where folks gardened and raised a little meat and dairy and traded back and forth on the same block.

We could do subsistence farming, it would be physically possible in the USA.

The towns over 100,000 population might struggle some? They have a pretty tight population density, not a lot of room for gardens, even counting window boxes on high rises.

And, northern areas would struggle more, it is hard to grow anything productive from November into June where I live, would get pretty lean.

And, run into a bad year, or bad insects, we no longer have the safety net of farmers, your local area runs out of food and you are hosed, there aren't the surpluses we have now to tide us over. I'd sure not sleep easy under that system. There appears to be far less adaptability, less security with the local only setup.

I just don't see more than what are doing it now, willing to try. They don't want that farming life. It is there for them, just like it is for all of us here.

They are not interested. I don't think you can convince many to give up a $100,000 job so they can go hoe some turnips.....

Paul

Oh that is so true. I gave up hoeing years ago, and I can't wait in a few weeks some nice sweet corn will be trucked in from out of state to eat. That is sooo sweet. And even if I go and visit my friends in Iowa there sweet corn is so good it is called Candy Corn. Also one that is called Peaches and Cream.
I am sure it is a very intense variety of a hybrid just made for sweetness.
When they ask you how many you want to eat don't say 3 as they MEAN Dozen, thats right they ask you how much you will eat by the Dozen.

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I dont know if it would be physically impossible or not. Probably more likely in the suburbs. There's alot of land that is considered "suburban". I took a trip to Italy a few years ago and the one thing that struck me was the farms. You take one step out of the city limits in any Italian city, and you are on a farm. Every square inch outside the city is farmed. People either live in the city, or they are farmers. Same in Germany. I haven't travelled too much beyond that in Europe but it might be that way all over there.

I agree about American people just not wanting to farm ( or do much of anything for themselves ). A word about that 100k job...I've always said that the big salaries in the city are offset by the cost of living. I lived in the city for a while and made a good salary but never had anything to show for it...the city just sucked it up.

Well I was just talking to a friend of mine from the city. He has been working there for years and confided in me that his salary was now 85K.....he also confided that he has a whopping 5K in savings. This is with no car, no major purchases, rents an apartment! I told him he could have a few acres in the woods here and work part time and make a higher profit. Sounded very tempting to him but I doubt he'll give up his triple latte, cell phone service, and favorite restaurants!

One of the advantages that German and Italian farmers have is that there is a ready market for their produce.

If you're an Italian farmer on one of those farms right outside the city, you could load up your cart in the morning and start pushing it towards the city center. You probably wouldn't make it 10 blocks before all those Italian mothers would have bought everything you had.

Here in America, you could push that cart all day and hardly sell anything, and you'd probably risk arrest in doing so.

As a result, Italian farmers (I don't know about the German ones) don't have that hate relationship with the cities and the city folks that we do. Many small Italian farmers see the cities as a positive source of income where we in rural America just see the cities as a nuisance or a threat.

I can attest to this. On a day-time flight from Paris to Nuremburg, I was struck by the fact that every square inch of land from the Paris outskirts to around the German border was being farmed. It looked exactly like the Bugs Bunny falling-from-high-up scenes. I found it kind of creepy, though, and it reaffirmed the belssing of not living in Europe - too many people, too little space.

I don't think that not wanting to farm is a uniquely American affectation, though. I think that most people are just so busy that they don't think they can farm/garden - and that is no different anywhere else in the world that I've gone. Rather than being an American/European distinction, I think it is one of urban/rural consideration. A couple tomato plants are in the backyards/balconies of a surprising number of urban homes. It's just that most people see it as a big leap to go from a couple plants in pots to a bunch in a cut strip of ground....and then from that small garden to an acre or more of plants likely seems (and may be, for many) impossible.

Better than you might think, actually ... cellar temps (50 or so) are ideal for a fuller-bodied beer. Light lagers are better colder, but that's only one kind of beer.

To follow this up, I'd like to lay out a few observations I made just yesterday, on a roundabout trip through west-central Virginia.

We drove from Orange County (in the piedmont) over the mountains to the Shenadoah Valley near Harrisonburg, south down the valley for a bit, then back over the mountains through Nelson and Albemarle counties, and back home.

It was about 250 miles of driving, through mostly rural ag-based country. The quality of the land ranges from decent (out here in rock/clay country) to excellent (in the legendary Shenandoah Valley), though much of the more mountainous country is "geographically-challenged" and less suited to large workable clearings. This route also travels through "big house" country, where old (mostly early 19th century) named manors dominate the countryside.

Here's what I noticed:

*The open land was used largely for pasture and row crops (probably 60-70%), and the remainder tended toward grass--yes, grass, sometimes multiple acres of it, all neatly moved with the lines (and sometimes the mower) quite visible. People out here actually have lawns that big (often the "prospect" of the big houses, but sometimes just a multi-acre patch around a run-of-the-mill mid-century rambler).

There are agroforestry operations in the area--we passed a couple of mill and local-produce lumberyards, and log trucks are a fairly common sight on the roads.

*The row crops tended toward corn, though other sort of plantings were out there (beans/peas/wheat, with perhaps a bit more variety in the Valley). There were also quite a few hoophouse and market garden-sized operations, particularly in the mountains, and on smaller Shenandoah plots. Also, in the mountains, there are quite a few orchard/berry/you-pick operations as well (more so than in the lower country). There are also quite a few wineries, but we drove by fewer actual vineyards than one might expect, given the amount of wine produced here.

*The pasture here on the East side of the mountains is largely devoted to horses and their hay. There are miles and miles of black board horse fence on piedmont highways, especially surrounding the big houses. There are a few large cattle operations as well, but sheep/goats/other grazers are pretty thin on the ground, and we saw few chicken houses.

In the valley, things are a bit more diverse, but the shift is toward cows. There are also a couple of battery poultry operations near Harrisonburg that we passed (one chicken, and one turkey). This part of the valley is Mennonite country, by the way, so their ag traditions dominate.

In the mountains, there are a few goats and yard chickens, and some hay, as well as horses and cows.

*In the smaller plots (yards, mostly), we saw quite a bit of lawn, of course, as well as quite a few gardens, though the gardens tended to pop up in front of the shacks, rather than the manors (I recall seeing exactly one big house in this area with a home garden visible from the road, and that was awhile ago).


So here are my loose conclusions:

*Horses and lawns dominate the landscape in the piedmont, and take up some of the best land around. These are not draft animals, by the way, but show/status horses--they neither work, nor are they eaten. Plus, they occupy some of the best farmland (and when I say farmland, I mean it--I believe the horse properties around here are considered agricultural operations, despite the fact that they feed nobody).

*Mennonites and mountain folk in general tend to do more with less. They have bigger gardens, and more intensive operations. For the Mennonites (and those influenced by them in the Shenandoah Valley) this may be tradition, but for the mountain folks it seems to be a combination of ingenuity and necessity--the bigger gardens abut the smaller houses, and the ag operations seem to produce more high-dollar crops (tomatoes and berries and mushrooms and such, as well as value-added processing) in the fairly small clearings permitted by the landscape (the company Edible Landscaping, for example, is perched on the top of a wooded ridge in Nelson County, and is largely based out of a cluster of greenhouses and garden plots--it's an impressive operation). Even in the piedmont, the small house/big garden tendency carries through, even if gardens are somewhat fewer--the poorer yards still produce more food, in smaller spaces, than the richer ones.


Now, whether small-scale ag can feed the world is beyond me, but if you look closely around here, it's hard not to notice the amount of farmland going to waste (right off the main roads and clearly visible). Row crops aside (I mean, I have no way of knowing, driving by, what seed or methods or the like are being used in a particular field, so I can't judge there), there is quite a lot of time effort and land going into feeding egos, rather than people (hay for horses for showing/racing/hunting, and lawns for views and pretty prospects, often for the sheer look of the thing).

Overall, the best practices I saw on that drive were in areas with a strong agricultural tradition based on community and religious practice (not easily duplicated in areas without strong Mennonite, or the like, influences), or on the most marginal land. Market gardens, and household gardens, and mixed livestock operations, rather than field upon field of corn, seem to dominate in such areas, and provide much more direct subsistence value to those growing them than commodity crops would. The best land, by and large, seems to be the least used.

What this means, I'm not exactly sure, but it sure is an interesting divide.

I disagree with the "can not" feed the world. There are millions and millions of acres of land in the US that is not put to productive use. How much of that would have livestock on it if the price of meat doubled or tripled or even more? How many in this country would grow tomatoes and take then to a farmer's market if they sold for $20/lb. Most small farmers do it because they love the life for what ever reason. More will do it when it makes bigger profits.

If the premise is that if trends remain the same, a growing population, fewer and fewer small farmers, people collecting benefits don't get off their collective rears and get productive, and no one adjusts to changing economic, environmental, and regulatory conditions, then I agree, small farms won't feed the world.

But people change. Some lead change, some change only when they get hungry enough. If suburbanites all had a few chickens in the backyard and a summer garden, there would be an even larger surplus of food than we have today. When there are real profits in small farms, there will be people lining up to farm.

But wouldn't it be better to feed ourself before worrying about feeding the world? Then teach each area of the world how to garden where they are. Some good gardening spots are not being used, use to be very food productive until civil wars tore them apart. Even now, if we send food, the neediest probably do not get it. (South Africa for an example).
So, I do not see it as our reponsibility to feed more than the US - but help others as we can.

Rather as they say on an air plane - put your breathing mask on first so you can put the next one on your child cause if you are passed out, you're no good to another.

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There may be a lot of marginal land available but at what else's expense? Much of it is also home to other creatures which we share this planet with and their numbers are shrinking. We criticize those in other nations who destroy ancient forests for farming but defend our own "urban sprawl" which is consuming farms at a tremendous pace. I suppose that we could simply force any existing wildlife into the mountains but that would only work until the mountains were terraced and farmed. Just too many people and not enough space for anything else.

Martin

I live in good farming country. I believe I would need 2 acres to feed my family of 4, and at that we would have to give up red meat. I would also need my family to help me, as that assumes I would be doing much of the work by hand, and I cannot.

In areas less blessed by Mother Nature, 2 acres would not be enough!

Interesting dialogue here for sure.

I live in a DC suburb in Maryland. I have about .5 acres.
I think many on this thread are reasonable, but some blaming work ethic are reasons for people not farming is incorrect and slanderous in the same way that city folk may slander country folk. Both are generally wrong.
Most city folk didn't move out there, they were born there and were not raised the way country folk are. Not exactly their fault. I was raised in big towns, not cities but not exactly farming communities, but we had gardens when I was very little.
The thinking in our house was education, so I only know what I'm taught. I work near DC and have a good government job. I own 5 Acres in WV now as well that needs alot of TLC to become useful for anything. People trashed it, literally. Garbage and tires everywhere. I guess the old parents there died and their kids were shine-retarded as the neighbors said. I've worked hard when I can get out there to clean it up and make it a livable place again. I'll subdivide in half and sell them to people that want this property. It is not exactly what I wanted, but I fell into it.
I had wanted a nice property out there where I can retire. I have some time to consider what I want. I too thought the more land the better staying to what I could afford, but that would be a mistake. I will be closer to 60 when I move out there permanently as I'm 44 now. So maybe 5-10 acres would be enough.
I like working hard, prefer it to my job in a lab. But ultimately my wife and I both making good salaries with strong benefits will keep us where we are for another 10-15 years. Say what you will, mock us if you need. But this is the route we have taken.

Back to my current property in the suburb of MD. I have a couple gardens but have not exactly maximized the property. Not even close. We have had 3 boys oldest is 8, so with both working, we have had our hands full just surviving. I started gardening when my wife was pregnant with our first. Felt like I was growing something too that way. I love it, but it has been challenging for a semi-city boy with no experience. The deer and rabbits outsmarted me for a few years. This year, I tried more types of vegetables and love that the internet can help us dunces with problems and thank all those taking the time to give insight on problems routine for those with experience. Simple things like black fleas eating my eggplant leaves was cured simply and naturally thanks to an anonymous soul in a forum.
The talk here about maximizing our yards is new to me, truly and embarrassingly. People had gardens, but typically 5% at max of the property. Again, people just don't know another way here. Its not being lazy per say (some are yes). We do have restrictions though the neighbor behind me has chickens and I think I'd love to raise them at least for eggs. I have seen a severe increase in gardens here which is wonderful. Both my neighbors are now growing veggies. With 3 boys, I don't want them to grow up ignorant as I may have. They still will to a degree since I'm just learning, but at least I will have planted a 'seed' in them to continue. As they age, I intend to put them in charge of their own plots and stretch the gardening out into the yard. Next year my 8 year old will get his first plot. Maybe one of them will return to the farm life, who knows? Of their grandparents, 2 were born on farms. But the farms were lost during the depression and they never returned. So its not foreign to their gene pool.
Anyway, don't beat me up too hard. And sorry for the rambling.

People dont realize how much food 2 acres would produce. That is a massive amout of food. I 'mostly' feed myself on about 1/2 acre and we have a very short growing season. I think if you had two good acres for growing and a few more to keep a small flock of sheep or goats you could eat pretty good.

Could small farms feed the US and toe world? Maybe/probably. Will it happen? Probably not unless we have a catastrophic economic meltdown that forces people back to the earth.

Here is something to ponder. By 2050 we will need to produce 100% more food, 70% of this increase must come from some sort of technology.

While it is easy to say that you could raise enough food for you, your family, and a neighbor on your 2 acres that simply can not occur in our most densely populated cities where people can be tens of miles away from bare land.

I am a huge supporters of small agriculture and methods for a farmer to increase his profits by adding value to his products, however these niche producers simply can not produce food in the magnitude needed to feed 9 billion people.

Jim

The biggest advantage and probably the only reason there are so many small farmers in Europe is the huge amount of subsidies that the European Union doles out to their farmers. As a people the Europeans have said that they want to keep small farms and are using their taxes to fulfill that promise.

Jim

Another point about those who used to leave the farms is where they went when they left. In my case, mandatory military service was the first stop. First job out of there lasted 11 years in manufacturing fertilizer. That was followed by 13+ years manufacturing dairy equipment. Away from the farm but still connected to farming. 50 years ago there were a lot of agricultural-related jobs to absorb many of those leaving the farms. Closest I see now are retired farmers working in produce departments in supermarkets.

Martin

If you want to blame anything for getting people off the farm blame World War II and the GI Bill.

That's a good start ... but keep going. How about public school too?

I'm surrounded by a bunch of old farmers who worked their butts off to send their children to college. Now their kids are grown with good jobs 4 hours away, they see their children and grandchildren twice a year on major holidays (if they're lucky) and they're sitting around collecting their social security and waiting to die.

The chain is broken for them. Their lifestyle has not been perpetuated to the next generation. They're alone, bitter, angry, and most of them don't even realize why.

If you were responding to my post, I'm no advocate of developing every sq inch of our country. In my travels I see lots and lots of farmland that has been abandoned. It may be marginal for certain crops, but if you've seen Allan Savory's TED talk on intensive grazing, livestock can be just what that marginal land needs to become highly productive and that also creates habitat for some wildlife. And if Savory, Salatin, Judy, and several folks in HT are to be believed, our existing grazing land can produce much more meat with much less petroleum, less impact on the environment, less grain, etc.

No, I was not.

Martin