dispatches from the fields: the trouble with small-scale farming
Posted by admin on 27 Aug 2008 at 05:15 am | Tagged as: beyond organic
Heres something to think about, originally posted on Gristmill, by Stephanie Paige Ogburn.
Should small-scale farmers who grow organically and sell locally or regionally be able to make a middle-class living with farming as their sole source of income?
I’ve always answered this question with a fervent “yes,” at least from a philosophical perspective. But the answer to the follow-up question — “do they?” — is nearly always a resounding no.
Sure, there are exceptions. In Southwest Colorado, I live in an immature market for small-scale, local food, so farmers here are probably doing worse on the whole due to lack of market penetration. (When you live in a rural area with low population, you can’t just sell to the top 1 or 2 percent of customers — you really have to have a widespread appeal in order to lift sales, since your population base is so much smaller than if you were selling to an urban center. And that depth of customer base takes a long time to build.) So here, out of say, 25 vegetable farmers I know selling at area markets, only one of them earns a full time living from her farming occupation.
The reality is, it’s really hard to make a living selling a low-end product that is easily replicable and requires a high quantity of labor, but, comparatively speaking, a low level of skill to produce. And food is a low-end product. Tomatoes at $3/lb, which is what they go for here, are cheap. Like it or not, small farmers locally and across the U.S. are selling a cheap product at a minuscule scale, which, anyway you look at it, is a failing business model.
This is a problem, and the small growers I know have a variety of solutions.
Surely the question we should all be asking at this point is, can the planet sustain a middle-class american lifestyle for anyone? Should we be lowering our expectations, so that we view survival as success. And things like food growing should be viewed as successful if it contributes to the overall survival of a regions populace, even if it doesnt make money.
We have been spoilt. We don’t regard a business as being successful unless it employs people, and makes enough money for the owners to save, invest, expand their operations and other luxuries that aren’t truly necessities for life.
If it keeps you and others around you alive, and even in a comparable state of food abundance, it is a success, whether it makes you rich or not…. and we are going to see a lot less instant millionaires as fuel gets more and more scarce and expensive. Small scale local food enterprises set up now may not make us rich, but may be the difference between comfort and strife in the near future.
In this economy, if you want to be a small farmer, it’s probably more practical to assume it will be an income-boosting hobby rather than your primary source of income, even if it is what you spend the majority of your time doing. I’ve run into this reality repeatedly over the time period that I’ve been engaged in the alternative food movement, and as a result, I’ve come to think of small scale farming more as one of a diverse set of economic activities practiced by an individual or couple than as a primarily income-generating career occupation.
Maybe I’m getting worn down by the dominant economic system; and I’m certainly starting to think of market farming as being no different from running any small business in America — from a financial standpoint, if the business owner wants to keep her operation small, it’s by and large a losing proposition, and only one worth entering for quality of life reasons.
The exception is if one offers a high-end product that rich people will pay a lot for, thus enabling one to keep quantities small, quality high, and the business local and independent. Thus, someone entering small scale farming, and expecting to stay small, should either develop a value-added product that she can sell at a high margin or expect to be poor, yet happy and work additional jobs to make ends meet.
Although the local foods movement does seem to be thriving, I haven’t seen an equivalent jump in the percentage of small farmers being able to base their entire livelihood on their farming occupation. I guess I’m glad there are a lot of people out there who are willing to farm on a small scale because it’s what they believe in, but I’m also sad that it’s so hard to make money farming. I’m also curious if others, possibly those living near higher-end markets like San Francisco or New York City, have seen an increase in farmers making a livable wage as the number of local consumers and the prices they pay for fresh produce rise.
Agriculture has been skewed by our ‘bigger is better’ economy, and we suspect that in the coming years local people will start turning to local farmers (as well as growing some food themselves) as the supermarket shelves start being empty more often. But, some action on the part of government would be welcome, in the form of the same breaks that have been given to big agri-business ie tax breaks, grants and training. It would be nice if governments started recognising the increasing contribution to survival made by small scale farms, but don’t hold your breath.
