Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Gene forwards:

> The United States had 6 million farms in 1944, and by 1970 that number had 
> declined to 3 million, a rate of loss of almost 3 percent each year. If the 
> pattern had held, we would have just over a million farms today. Instead we 
> have 2.1 million, and the rate of decline has slowed to a trickle, with 
> today's total essentially the same as that of 1990

Maybe.  But I think some number games are being played here.  In the 40's 
there were hundreds of farms, around here they were dairy farms, of 100 acres 
or 
less.  In the 70's came the 'get big or die' mentality.  Problem was it 
wasn't 
based strictly on getting a bigger farm, but rather on continuing to increase 
in size.  Farmer A bought out farmer B and eventually farmers C & D in an 
effort to play the 'gotta keep getting bigger' game.  So the number of farms 
decreasing by half from the 40's to the 70's doesn't tell much of what was 
really 
going on.

And now of days are the number of farms really increasing or is the USDA 
simply measuring them by a different yardstick?  I wonder how many other 
people on 
this list got one of those USDA surveys threatening you with mahem if you 
didn't fill it out an return it.  People who did, even if they were 'farming' 
their 50' x 50' back yard, are now counted as farmers.

I've just searched and can't find the article on an alternative farming site, 
but a few months ago a "small farmer" was bewailing how it was necessary for 
some of his family to work off farm in order to keep the farm going.  The 
main 
gist of his article though was how he was having trouble selling a specialty 
Mexican bean (this was in Southern California).  In order to be righteous and 
noble, the farmer's pickup was loaded with the beans, vines and all, and 
taken 
to a Hispanic market where the people recognized what they were but would not 
pay his price for them.  He then took them to an upscale farmers market where 
the Anglos said they'd pay just about any price if he would pick and shell 
them.  In explaining why he had to have off-farm income, the farmer said his 
Hispanic foreman (foreman!?) could not sell the beans to the Oaxaca 
immigrants 
because they were used to paying 7 cents  pound rather than the dollar and 
half 
he was asking.  He said the foreman (foreman!!?) explained that here he had 
to 
pay the workers (workers!?) seven dollars an hour rather than seven dollars a 
day as he had in Oaxaca.  Moreover there was the expense of the tractor, 
fertilizer, etc.   Now wait.   His enterprise for that part of the season 
ended up 
being half a dozen pickup truck loads of beans - vines and all.   Foreman, 
workers, tractor, purchased fertilizer!  I wonder how many of the farms 
refered 
to in the article as needing someone off farm to support them are because 
they 
are run on the miniature agribuisiness model.  People don't seem to be able 
to get out of that mode of thinking.

I know several operations that turn a nice profit and don't have foremen, 
laborers, tractors, and don't purchase fertilizer.  Makes me think that the 
writer of the article hasn't stepped back far enough in time to gain a 
perspective. 
 The 'small farms' that need outside support (to pay for the farming) seem to 
be only small in comparison to the huge mega-farms.


James