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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] as if farming weren't hard enough

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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] as if farming weren't hard enough
  • Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 20:48:51 -0500

To be fair, I think I can set up a mill, a profitable one, using an existing building for less than the cost of a 45 HP tractor.

What most regions do is form a co-op, where a bunch of local grain growers own, collectively the mill.  I think this is the smartest route to go for truly SMALL scale grain growing.  I produce a MILLION pounds of corn in a single year.  This by national standards is extremely small but some here might gawk at that number.  I want to cut that to a fraction and be growing at least three grains and associated cover crops simultaneously on a five year rotation.

Because we just started using our own combine last year we still have a bit of a learning curve in terms of harvest  Corn and soybean is easy and great to learn on.  In another decade I hope to be claiming I have gone both chemical free and sustainable, cut the amount of land I am using for production by 75 acres (the worst of the ground (nutrient rich but floods and thus constantly fighting weeds).

I hear ya though Kathryn  I spend a great deal of time research old ag books from the 1800s and early 1900s trying to figure out how they made it work.  Its an absolutely fascinating time to be a farmer...of any type.  Small grains, if you have enough land is definitely the way to go.

To be honest I think any farmer that thinks they cannot make a good living on less than a 1000 acres is a sad excuse for a farmer.

Richard Stewart



On Mar 7, 2010, at 8:30 PM, KAKerby AT aol.com wrote:

I did a bit more reading last night (the kind of reading where you look at the clock and think "geez, I should go to bed, but this is SO interesting......"), and learned that each major wheat category has at least some varieties which are resistant to the new UG99 rust.  One big question is why those are resistant, and the other big question is whether they can provide the same kinds of field production as the non-resistant varieties.  >From the reading it seemed that the researchers looking into this are not so concerned about finding resistance but rather in getting farmers to move away from the prone varieties toward these new varieties, given that they may not yield as well.  That's speaking globally, not necessarily locally or nationally.  I can send along a link to the study where they looked at hundreds of varieties for rust resistance if anyone is interested.

The comments below are most interesting to me, moreso than the issues with rust.  It seems that grains are the last holy grail for localized production and small scale, value-added production.  Veggies, tree fruit, bramble fruit and even meats and dairy products are now being produced successfully at the cottage level, but precious little seems to be happening with small grains in this regard.  Maybe that's because the infrastructure is so expensive, or perhaps the tools aren't there anymore to work with small grains on a cottage basis.  Maybe some of both.  But small scale grain harvesting seems a relatively straightforward set of problems that relatively few folks are working on.  I was really jazzed to read that you're exploring that very topic and finding some ways to tap those markets.  I keep telling my engineer husband that if he can help me design some improved harvesting and processing tools (shocking, threshing, hulling, etc), there might be a market not only for those products but also for that equipment.
 
I'll review the videos you provided and look into the Meadows product line.  Maybe someday I'll be swapping notes with you about value-added pricing.  :)
Kathryn Kerby
Frog Chorus Farm
Snohomish, WA




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