Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

I could not agree more Pego. I try to do what your uncle should have done. We are still small (70 acres) and we sell as little as possible because everything you sell diminishes fertility. And really there are most things that can be found much cheaper in a super market. I  can buy a metric ton of local potatoes here now for about $35. While if you count our hours we put in we would need $2- 3 per kilo (almost a hundred times more expensive) to make a few $$ per hour. At least our own potatoes are very good and have seen no chemicals. They are not for sale. And if we have a surplus we feed them to our own animals.

I think though that both big and small farmers are being squeezed to dead at the moment. It is a way of life, not a way to make a living. (make big money)

John

: Re: [Livingontheland] Livingontheland Digest, Vol 411, Issue 3

Hi John

 

I dunno about there, but here my family fell prey to this industrization, commoditization  money trap. Taking bigger loans to get into bigger acerage and equipment to manage that acerage and chemps to make up for the total lack of natural inputs, because giants don't have the time and resources to do that ffor giant farms.  After 80-100 years of this shindig all my family have lost their farms.  Every durned one of them.  The last to own were my aunt and uncle and by the end they were working 90hr weeks to keep up and pay all these incredible bills, only to see all their profits roll upstream to the banks and big Ag.  Their kids wouldn't touch the farm with a pole they were so exhausted by the entire thing.  What a loss and sorrow when they sold the land to enjoy the year they had left until they died.   That land was beautiful and bountiful, We litterally harvested morel mushrooms by the bushelful from the hills on it before my uncle let those hills be ripped down for roadfill so that he could have a few more acres of flatland.

 

What did they have for all that in the end?  Educated kids, which is no small thing, a tiny profit margin that turned to loss on bad years and litterally no life left to have with their kids and grandkids or even each other.  When I looked back at the shape of it all what I saw was that this had been a trap for us.  We all were promised profits and a good life for our families.  What we got was the farms turning into poisoned, depleated lands and required additional in leases to grow enough for profits.  Industrial farming isn't really about greater profits, it is about concentration of profits and not usually in the farmer's hands.

 

I think about our beautiful hills and what would have happened if my uncle had drawn a line somewhere in those early days that said. "I will not take more than I can pay for, handle no more than than enough to feed our family, build our futures and enjoy our lives with".  If we had just not stepped onto that ratrace.  Those morels  are valued at $50-60 LB.  An afternoon's work would have been an extra week's pay in season and still left enough for next season and my aunt's gourmet cookery.  All the things needfull to keep the old place running were within reach.  Their old tractor was paid off, their land eventually got there.

I am on this list because there simply has to be a better way of handling the land and of having a real life that isn't basically an indenture to those compnies   You don't need big equipment for small, or many employees.  You don't need expensive inputs and, frankly, nobody needs an expensive life. The more expensive our farms and land is, the less we get out of them

On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:01 AM, "livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org" <livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Big Ag hurts the small farm (John D'hondt)


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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:49:30 +0100
From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Big Ag hurts the small farm
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
    <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <0F435AB9356D4F44B95BD9AF5A7254D9@Targadc5fefe82d>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
    reply-type=original


I fear oil and big machines changed that a bit Dan. Small scale is still
more productive but not necessarily more profitable. A few years ago we got
a letter from our Dep. of ag. in the letterbox explaining that we should aim
to expand. An example was given from a huge beef farm where a man and wife
team rounded up 450 beef animals per week by helicopter. They made just $5
of profit per head but that still made for a few thousand $$ per week. We
were told we had to aim for something like that.
And indeed big farmers make small profits per head on huge numbers and the
whole system is further geared to benefit them. For instance, we have a
compulsory annual Tb test. A farmer with just 4 cattle will pay something
like $160 for this or $40 per head. A man with 400 cattle will pay $300 or
less than $1 per head.
No wonder so many small ones are squeezed out of business. However, if oil
gets too expensive it are the big ones that will get it in the neck while
the small farms may survive. The question is how many small farms will be
left by then though.
John

>I found this quote in my archives:
>
> "The ambition for broad acres leads to poor farming, even with men of
> energy. I scarcely ever knew a mammoth farm to sustain itself; much less
> to
> return a profit upon the outlay. I have more than once known a man to
> spend
> a respectable fortune upon one; fail and leave it; and then some man of
> more modest aims, get a small fraction of the ground, and make a good
> living upon it. Mammoth farms are like tools or weapons, which are too
> heavy to be handled. Ere long they are thrown aside, at a great loss."
>
> Source: Abraham Lincoln, Sept 30, 1859, Wisconsin State Fair
>
> Dan C
> Belgium, WI
>
> On 10/9/2013 11:00 AM, livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 22:06:25 -0600
>> From: tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
>> Subject: [Livingontheland] Big Ag hurts the small farm, but which
>> grows the most food?
>> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>> Message-ID: <5254D641.50806@lobo.net" ymailto="mailto:5254D641.50806@lobo.net" saprocessedanchor="true">5254D641.50806@lobo.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>>
>> Big Ag hurts the small farm, but which grows the most food?
>> http://www.nationofchange.org/big-ag-hurts-small-farm-which-grows-more-food-1381242642
>>
>> *The Land Grab*
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
>



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