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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Thriving Small Farms

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  • From: mIEKAL aND <dtv@mwt.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Thriving Small Farms
  • Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:03:20 -0600

The amount of hogwash circulating in this thread is really uncharacteristic of the NAFEX list. I work for Organic Valley, a national farmers coop centered in WISC but with farmer members in 17 states. We have 650 "small farms" in our coop alone, from about 40 acres to a thousand acres or so. The majority of our farmers are dairy farmers who are receiving almost double the pay price of conventional dairy. We have a waiting list of 3 years for farmers waiting to get on the truck, sold $150 million in product this year. We also have a lot of meat & vegetable producers as well. The board of directors has had to slow down growth for several years in a row because it was decided growth about $25% a year was not sustainable. We have also become a model for other producer coops around the US & abroad.


mIEKAL


On Tuesday, December 23, 2003, at 08:49 AM, Jim F wrote:

     The talk of small farms dying out is not necessarily true unless we speak of 'what type' of small farms are dying.  There are alot of thriving farms but they are different from what many think of as a "farm."
     The small family farms that are going extinct are those that produce milk or raise grain.  Those folks who are creative enough to enter alternative agriculture often do quite well and we do not need vast tracts of land to do it - by "vast", I mean anything over ten acres.  One of the most successful small farms that I am familiar with grosses up to $200,000 per year.......................on just ONE acre.  I'm speaking of the well known(?) Kona Kai farm near Oakland, California and all they raise is mesclun (specialty lettuces) and edible flowers.
     The Kona Kai has an advantage that we, in Minnesota, do not have.  They can produce crops the whole year around.  My wife and I do not have that advantage, however, we do manage to earn a decent living on 1.4 acres - we are a fruit and berry farm and we direct market our produce raising peaches, apples, plums, a good variety of berries and specialty mushrooms.  Besides fresh fruit, we also sell jams, jellies and syrups, including maple syrup.  For the maple operation, we own the processing plant and tap other people's trees and others tap their trees bringing us the sap to process.
     That's us.  I know of others who farm just a few acres raising vegetables to sell at farmers' markets plus a host of others who raise herbs, some do cullinary, others raising medicinal.  I could write a full paragraph about other small family farms that I know of and none of them, zero, raise grain or produce milk.  The family farm is alive and well here in America.
 
Jim Fruth
Pequot Lakes, MN 





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