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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] was CSA worker payment: now interns

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  • From: Andy Fellenz <fellenz AT fltg.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] was CSA worker payment: now interns
  • Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:10:09 -0500

Allan,

We obviously have different perspectives on this issue, and I expect that neither of us will convert the other.
Compensation of people on a farm seems to be the one area where many of the hippie left wing alternative activist "organic" farmers hold onto their wallet even more tightly than the conservative conventional farmers they often vilify. Neither group seems comfortable with adequately compensating people for the value they bring to the farm enterprise, but at least the conventional farmers generally recognize that you should pay the people who work for you..
Re the student at a university argument. When I was an undergrad, I paid tuition, but mainly went to class and didn't do any research which created significant value or new knowledge. As a grad student I was paid - tuition reimbursement and a stipend which was above minimum wage for the hours I worked and I created value for the university through the course materials I developed or the research equipment I fabricated. Taking this analogy to farming - an unpaid experience could be just the learning part - how to run a piece of equipment, how to do a task, the basics of soil science, etc..., but when it crosses over into 100's of hours doing specific tasks, we are past the basic learning phase and into the realm of providing economic benefit to the farmer, just like in grad school where the student is doing grunt work on a professor's research program which will yield the student a thesis, dissertation or some publications while also yielding real benefits to the professor. Another comparison could be medicine - the student pays to go to medical school, they get paid to do a residency.
Regarding your last sentence. I haven't met anyone yet in farming who is in it purely for the money. I know the people who work on my farm aren't - several have made substantially more with off-farm jobs, but choose to work on the farm because it better meets their needs than a more remunerative job would. Finally, I don't see how it is possible to develop a truly sustainable small scale farming system when the base of the system in many cases is unpaid or underpaid labor. A truly sustainable system requires that people can make a living.
Andy

Allan.Balliett wrote:
Personally, my perspective is that if you have someone doing work on
your farm they deserve to be compensated and that training is a cost of
doing business. I don't accept the "we can't afford to pay them" excuse
>from Walmart, McDonalds or the company down the street and I don't think
it should be used by a farmer.

Andy -

A number of the farmers that started eco-ag farming back in the 80's when we did no longer offer paid internships. They still offer internships, but their logic is sort of a flip of your own. The do not think that farm internships should be paid internships.

They say that students are not paid by universities to learn, so why should a farmer pay a student farmer to learn?

The answer for us used to be that we thought it important that our work on the farm was more valueable to everyone if in the process of producing our crops we also produced new farmers.

Drawing from similar experiences as shaped the position of the farmers I mentioned above, we've decided over the years that we can't really afford a lot of the considerations interns bring to the mix and prefer to work with people who come to the farm for 'just a job.'

I have to admit that I find it eerie working on the farm with people who are more interested in their wages than they are in plants or animals.

-Allan in WV







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