Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

1
>   Time for more detailed reply now. My reply follows below.
>
>   paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>   -------------
>
>   The demand is there and growing with every report of recalls and
>   poisonings. The problem is not customers who won't buy. The problem is lack
>   of growers who can treat it as a business. And market growing is a business
>   simply because it offers produce in return for money. 
>
>   When you treat it as a business  you don't blame the customer; you find
>   what works and put it into practice. Or find a different business or
>   location. Like any business there are infinite ways to get it wrong. As in
>   any business it helps to have some background and experience with it, like
>   growing your own at home - not industrial farming. 
>   

Yeah. Right.  I don't often disagree with you, Paul, and I'm not exactly 
disagreeing with you now, but treating growing as a business is exactly 
why it became "Agribusiness."
Treating it like a business also means knowing when to exit the 
business. I'm taking this year off from losing money at the markets to 
restructure and plan for my own survival. One of the factors was that a 
farmer I know out East gets 4 (yes, FOUR) times as much for his 
vegetables as I can charge at the local market.
I can double my prices if I go to the Big City here, but at the rate of 
fuel increases and labor costs, it only gives a wash at this point.
I agree that someone who tries it one year and says customers don't 
understand their produce is probably making some mistakes. Large 
cucumbers are not the norm at a market. If yours are too big, then they 
didn't get picked soon enough. That takes extra labor to keep them under 
control, and a first-year farmer won't know how much labor until after 
the year is over.
Organic produce doesn't have to look weird or otherwise less than 
perfect. The farmer has to figure out how to put labor where petroleum 
and hybrid seeds used to go.  What is fine for you to eat isn't 
necessarily a marketable product.
More people will have a better chance at market farming as store prices 
increase. The current prices are nowhere near what they should be when 
all the costs are paid, and the nutrition isn't counted as the real 
value yet (overfed people don't care about nutrients, only convenience). 
A box of cereal is a 4 dollar box, with a couple of cents of grain 
tossed into it. As the costs of the boxes go up, more people will look 
for ways to buy in bulk and buy grains direct. Just as they did in the 
'70's when inflation hit. Back then, there was a lot of 'wiggle' room to 
consolidate the grocery chains and economize on storage and shipping. 
Since the present state is all WalMart Economized, any more 'squeeze' 
put on suppliers will just put the farmers out of business.
Farmers can't all move near a good market, and some places are 
stubbornly attached to cheap food prices. Many of the 'making it' 
factors are not under the farmers' control, while a few of them are. IF 
a farmer is near a good market area, then yes, a good manager/farmer can 
make a living at it. If they are not, then they have to go to extreme 
measures to create a market, whether through CSA, certified organic, or 
value-added processing. These all take extra investment and management 
by the farmers themselves, unlike starting a business making widgets, 
where there are several paths to get money, management help, and advice 
from other business organizations and the government.

The rub with being a small market farmer: if you are successful, you 
become self-sufficient. The System of Systems wants you to do things 
that make you MORE dependent on the System, not less. Smaller means less 
cashflow for the usury-mongers. That's why a milk-flooded market still 
provides incentives for farmers to expand:the System makes more money on 
the interest for the expansion loans than on the milk itself. The milk 
is only a marketing tool for the concrete contractors. Just as ethanol 
is only a marketing tool for the factory builders.

Dan