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market-farming - Re: Organic industry vs. organic movement

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Subject: Market Farming

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Organic industry vs. organic movement
  • Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 19:42:07 -0500


Jay Gee wrote:
> I don't think "size" is an issue, except for someone like yourself
> or for those who want a parasitic relationship with farmers (read
> that politicians and bureaucrats).

I am not sure of your point but it sounds like a disparagement of not only
me personally, but a broad sweep with the brush for many others who you view
in a negative way.

Could you be a little bit less contentious and explain how size does not
effect ones operation?

> If a farmer can make a go of a seven cow farm, why not???

If they could, then more power to them. But as I mentioned before, back in
the 1940's and into the 1950's this would be subsistence farming. Today, it
would be more difficult. Perhaps if a person had some kind of value added
operation it might be possible to make it work, but perhaps you can explain
it to us what kind of operation could work with that number.

But to put it in perspective, 99+ % of all dairy farmers are likely to
continue to be commodity producers. Not only because of the great difficulty
in trying to do value added dairy, but because of the personality of the
folks who like to farm.

> Given what is known about marketing and advertising,
> a savvy operator should be able to make a small farm
> profitable if the farmer is careful and selective about what
> is grown, who it is sold to and how it is marketed.

Could you give us some penciled out examples? I do this quite a bit. Almost
on a daily basis as I am sure others here do too. We are trying to figure
out what mix of numbers and products will bring a better return.

Here is my "philosophy" on penciling the numbers: if you figure out the
numbers on a piece of paper and are honest and realistic and the numbers
appear to work, there is a possibility that you can do it. But if you figure
out the numbers and they don't work out, I guarantee you that they will not
in real life. It may seem simplistic to some to hear that, but it is not
unusual to see some folks doing the same things over and over and yet ...
expecting the results to be different.

No matter how good you are at marketing, and we are at least better than
average, it is still very difficult to make those numbers work out to the
point that you can figure a modest income, not to mention a good income.

> The concept of having to have a large or very large
> farm to be competitive is archaic in the era of the
> Internet. This discussion list is indicative of how
> the farming business is changing. The future will
> show us the rest.
>
> I look forward to it!

It will be interesting. What I am hoping to hear are some of the successes
and not quite so much theory. We are pretty open with the numbers here at
Misty Ridge Farm as we do publish our schedule "F" on our web site and I
don't know of too many others who do that:) We are providing the information
that was not available when we looked for that kind of knowledge a few years
ago.

If people do have specific questions, we always try to be honest and give
them an answer to the best of our knowledge.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams
Misty Ridge Farm
Dairy heifers and dairy beef graziers
Viroqua, WI

www.mistyridgefarm.com





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